Reforms Without Referendum, Or Referendum Without Reforms?

M. A. Sumanthiran, Mano Ganesan and Dinesh Gunawardena

by N. Sathiya Moorthy - Tuesday, April 11, 2017

• Thus, no national newspaper (read: English) got to highlight a recent statement of Upcountry Tamil leader and Minister, Mano Ganesan
• Mano Ganesan indicated that the ‘Big Two’, namely the UNP and the SLFP, were happy to confine the constitutional reforms processes near-exclusively to electoral reforms
• SLFP representative at the meeting made it abundantly clear that they were prepared neither for wholesale constitutional reforms nor a referendum to make it happen
• Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera of the UNP said that they could not afford a referendum-centric Constitution, just now

Whether or not there is a national consensus of some kind for pushing through constitutional reforms, as promised by the present-day rulers, there are already differences if any consensus has at all been achieved. On that would also hinge the question if any of the proposed constitutional amendments, including a new constitution, if agreed upon, would require a nation-wide referendum.

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