Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Wednesday, 3 December 2014 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
In the current debate on the executive presidency, all pundits ignore the realism of J.R. Jayawardene the author of this Constitution. His last act as executive president was to deprive his successor that miraculous five-sixth majority obtained under a first-past-the-post system of elections.
Well conversant with the Tammany hall political instincts of the man emerging as the winner of the Presidential contest, he dissolved parliament effective midnight of his last day in office. The people confronted the dawn with a new executive President deprived of the five-sixth majority to tamper with the Constitution.
With the country faced with a revolt in the south, an insurrection in the north and a foreign army whose presence was resented by the people, an excellent case existed for the incoming redeemer in 1989 to give himself ten years to establish order and perhaps another ten for development.
It is a preposterous but a plausible suggestion. As plausible as what Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka suggested as a possibility in his earlier missive wherein he warned of a claymore mine that the common candidate may step on.
In contrast to Dr. Jayatilleka, who claims to be undecided, I am determinedly decided on whom I should vote for. I shall vote for Maithripala Sirisena. I will tell you why.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa led our nation in a deadly struggle to eradicate terrorism. He succeeded against all odds and won a war that many said was ‘unwinnable’. In 2010 he showed a war-weary nation the light at the end of the tunnel. A grateful nation returned him to a second term as President which was allowed by the Constitution.
What followed is both tragic and comic. Instead of the promised light, we got more tunnel. It is tragic because we failed to win the peace. While we celebrated our triumph we remained trapped in an “age that was worse than earlier ages” as was prophetically read in to the records of our legislature by Neelan Thiruchelvam quoting the poetry of Anna Akkamotova.
Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?
18th Amendment
The appalling decision to field General Sarath Fonseka to oppose the incumbent seeking a second term amounted to a possible setting where Churchill was challenged by a Montgomery. Churchill covered the Atlantic and the Pacific theatres. Montgomery liberated Alamein. The tunnel vision of the Opposition in 2010 added more tunnel and prevented light on our collective march of folly.
It was comic because Professor G.L. Pieris, Fellow of All Souls, took leave of his soul by masterminding the18th Amendment. It is comic because Professor Rajiva Wijesinghe admonished this writer at a liberal party seminar saying, “My dear Man, the 18th Amendment is the most progressive piece of legislation enacted by the government.” Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka and MPs Eran Wickramaratne and M.A. Sumanthiran were on the panel.
It is comic because Rauf Hakeem, in supporting the 18th Amendment, told us for some obscure reason that he was a Royal College Alumni who won the Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan Medal for oratory. What relevance that has to the 18th Amendment he did not explain.
It is comic that the principal opposition party decided to walk out instead of placing on record why it opposed the removal of term limits and the negation of the principle of the separation of powers which alone ensured that our collective voice is not stifled by executive prerogative.
The common candidate owes his candidacy and his possible election to the highest elected office of the land to the National Movement for a Just Society headed by Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thero. I don’t see him as the errand boy of former President Chandrika Kumaratunga or the leader of the UNP Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe.
It is possible that the common candidate had intended to impress upon the patron of the SLFP and the leader of the UNP that he remained true to his decent peasant values. Even if he did assure them that he would continue to address them as before - calling one Madam and the other Sir - what is so terrible about it?
For all we know he may have addressed the Incumbent President as ‘Oba Thuma’ or ‘Your Excellency’ when he attended the ‘last hopper’.
Though I am a Buddhist I am no great fan of the Buddhist Church which is represented by the institution called the ‘Maha Sangha’. But in Ven. Sobhitha I see the legatee of the great tradition bequeathed to Buddhists of independent Sri Lanka by the scholar monk Ven. Walpola Rahuala in his treatises ‘Heritage of the Bhikku’.
In its first chapter ‘Buddhism and social service’, Ven. Rahula explains that “Buddha directed his attention even towards the serious problem of government through compassion with a view to promoting a form of government that would not harm and hurt the people.” This explains the ideological thrust of both Prelates Ven. Sobhitha and Ven. Rathana.
The subsequent confluence of rival political actors is incidental to the process initiated by Sobhitha Thero, together with activist lawyers such as Jayampathi Wickremeratne and J.C. Weliamuna. It is doubtful whether Maithripala Sirisena would address either of the two lawyers as Sir.
Knowing the disarming charm of Jayampathi Wickeremeratne from my days of learning at the feet of Hector Abheywardene, it is possible that he has sufficiently explained the social dynamics the common candidate has to grapple with in this epochal event.
The Maithripala Sirisena candidacy is not an attempt to introduce a Neville Chamberlain in place of a Churchill. This exercise is not to dislodge an Adolf. It is a simple case of perestroika to reach a glasnost. It is an endeavour to put a Gorbachev in place of a Brezhnev.
Dr. Jayatilleka has had remarkably close associations with President Premadasa and President Mahinda Rajapaksa. It is possible that both Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mrs. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga have not been sagacious enough to recognise his Kissingerian talents. But is it reason enough to describe the common candidate as a simpleton manoeuvred by two elite members of our political firmament?
Is it not possible that the first generation peasant from Thamankaduwa wished to genuinely thank the Dowager queen and the Dauphin for putting him on the road to Versailles?
Changing tickets
I knew one of the two Presidents whom Dr. Jayatilleka served. I came to know Ranasinghe Premadasa the MP and Prime Minister quite well during the period from 1968 to 1974. I was then working at Lake House as a reporter first under Earnest Corea and later under Mervyn de Silva. Years later, when I served as country manager for Air Lanka in Japan and in the United Kingdom, I had several encounters with President Premadasa.
While I was serving in the UK, Ven. Walopla Rahula travelled to London for medical reasons. He was quite ill. On his way in he had been upgraded to First Class on the instructions of the Presidential Secretariat although he held a discounted Economy Class ticket. I received instructions to ensure his arrival formalities to be done expeditiously and to take him to the London Buddhist Vihara.
It was due to these fortuitous circumstances that I came to know the great scholar monk intimately. During his stay in London he gave an interview in which he praised the late Gamini Dissanayake for granting him some land in Colombo (I think it was Battaramulla) for him to reside in.
A few days later I received instructions from Colombo that he should not be upgraded to either First or Business Class on his return journey. Fortunately the airline had a policy of upgrading passengers on check-in by levying a surcharge. It was 40 pounds sterling which I had no hesitation to part with. I cast no aspersions. But those were bleak days when courtiers in the court anticipated the whims of the executive.
The UNP ranks have good reasons to dismantle the executive presidency. That is why Gamini Dissanayake as leader of the UNP invited Prime Minister Chandrika Kumaratunga under President Wijetunga to abolish the Executive Presidency in 1994. What goes around comes around.
The Principia Discordia says, “Bullshit makes flowers grow and that is beautiful.”
