The recent appointment of phony cabinet ministers and sub ministers cost 400 million rupees addition to already burdened taxpayer. Now the monster has woken with evil powers appointing unlimited number of Ministers and creating phony ministries when ever he wants. Third, Soon after winning the LTTE war MARA was in a stronger position both with Public and the Parliament which gave MR more powers to introduce 18th amendment.įourth, in order to face UN war crimes MR was looking additional powers and while obtaining additional presidential powers with the 18th Amendment, MR also included president for life,oppostion MP’s to cross over and obtain Ministry posts,police powers, judiciary, press freedom,prisons, freedom of speech, unreasonable arrests all under taken under President and for him to get away from war actorities locally etc…Please see following web. Silva’s forced influence on newly appointed CJ Shirani Bandaranayake to pass the 18th amendment. I think you know how 18th amendment was passed in the parliament.If I jot down a few such as….įirst, it was due to two third majority in the parliament. Had they commented conscientiously on any nominees – as government representatives too are bound to do – the President would then have an obligation to reconsider. The Leader of the Opposition and Mr Swaminathan, having accepted, have completely abandoned the responsibilities they are committed to fulfil. Mr Sumanthiran at least refused appointment. Indeed it is conceivable that, had Mr Sumanthiran served on the Council along with the Leader of the Opposition, Mrs Bandaranayake would never have been appointed Chief Justice. Experienced Parliamentarians such as the government representatives on the Council would surely have understood this and worked in a positive way to avoid embarrassment to the government from unsuitable persons.
The purpose of such a Council is not, I should add, to select persons to appoint, but to advise on the suitability of those selected by the Executive.
He would have been both forthright and polite in comments he would have made in the Council on nominees put forward, and if government had reciprocated, there could have been rethinking in cases of obvious unsuitability. I have expressed regrets about Mr Sumanthiran’s refusal to accept appointment to the Parliamentary Council created by the 18 th Amendment because I believe he could contribute a lot in a small and serious Committee – as I saw when he and I served on the Committee to amend Standing Orders. I suppose this is not surprising from a party that voted so consistently to subvert the Constitution it had introduced, through the first and second and abortive third amendments, but it is surprising that no one has drawn attention to the irresponsibility with which the UNP has treated the provisions that provide some sort of check on the absolute power of the President to make appointments to important positions. What I did not anticipate was the sheer contempt with which the opposition would treat the Constitution as amended. In both cases however there was such an improvement on what we had had before, that I did not think we should have allowed the perfect to be the enemy of the good. I should add though that the 18 th amendment has its flaws, just as the Local Government Elections Bill had. I suppose it could be argued that attention to process and constitutional consistency is unnecessary, and whatever works is acceptable, but I fear that such an approach leads to problems – as with our confusion of an Executive Presidency with a Westminster style Cabinet – and it is tragic that we continue to suffer the consequences without understanding the reasons. This was understood immediately however by the Canadian Senator who visited us in I think 2007 on behalf of the IPU.
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