by Asanga Welikala
- on 01/20/2015
If there was a central plank to the common opposition platform in the presidential election, it was about what to do with the executive presidential system in general and the Eighteenth Amendment in particular, in view of the crisis of democratic governance created by the insidious authoritarianism and pervasive corruption of the Rajapaksa regime. During the campaign, except for those who blindly supported the regime come what may, it was clear that there was a wide – and widening – consensus about the undesirability of the Eighteenth Amendment, both in terms of the abolition of the two-term limit and the removal of the Seventeenth Amendment restraints on presidential power. However, there was perhaps less of a consensus on the wholesale abolition of presidentialism, even though important sections of the opposition and civil society were committed to it. This was as it should be, for the positive case as to how a return to parliamentarism would address our problems with executive power is yet to be properly made. As I have argued
previously, the malaise is with our political culture of democracy rather than institutions
per se. But the new government must rigorously make the positive argument in favour of abolition and for parliamentarism, if that is the direction of constitutional reform that they intend now to take.
Photo courtesy The Business Times
