A NEW CONSTITUTION AUTHORED BY THE PEOPLE
ALL UNDER THE RULE OF LAW
The language and terminology of the Constitution should be intelligible to citizens who are now expected to have had thirteen years of school education. Education should include the awakening of a broad civic consciousness, democratic values and social responsibility and a commitment to the safeguarding of the human, moral, socio-political and natural environment to keep our island home a healthy milieu for a pluralist society. The courtesy of honour and respect accorded to religion and all persons in positions of religious and secular authority should not detract from the fundamental rights, autonomy, identity, freedom and equality of every person and all legitimate socially recognized groups under the rule of law. Nor should any person or group be considered above the law of the land.
The process of drafting the Constitution would have raised the key issues that needed to be clarified, well understood and supported by all sections of the people. Only people with goodwill towards all others will have the benefit of a good Constitution that upholds truth and justice, dignity and equality, honour and mutual respect of all. That would be the base on which understanding, graciousness and loving kindness and magnanimity could flourish so that this Nation will be a family of civilized and cultured communities.
A CONSTITUTION SIGNIFICANT TO ALL
All previous constitutions have been drafted by a few select individuals mainly to satisfy the narrow desires of the power holders who, against principles of democracy, presumed themselves to be the most qualified and knowledgeable and arrogated to themselves the task of drafting and ratifying Constitutions made according to their selfish image, likeness and short-sighted political vision. One wonders whether they were ever aware of the nepotist, autocratic, dictatorial, tyrannical and undemocratic tendencies in their characters influencing the drafting and amending the Constitutions. We detect in each of the constitutions the institutionalizing of undemocratic elements that undermined the basic foundations of a democratic, socialist republic in which the people were supposed to be free, equal and sovereign. Inevitably a less defective new Constitution has arisen.
Very prominent politicians who have been and are vociferous even about constitutional matters are so divisively chauvinistic and narrowly racialist in their outlook that they cannot positively contribute anything towards unifying people of different races, languages, cultures, religions, views, political ideologies and outlooks on life who inhabit Sri Lanka. Their intellectual understanding is coloured by bias and prejudice and their visions are blurred by narrow that selfish political policies that do harm to the country and its people in the long run. The narrow and selfish policies not only with regard to Sinhala, Tamil and English languages but also the arbitrary adoption of various administrative measures and blatant discrimination with regard to human rights of ethnic and religious minorities are sufficient to prove this. The authors of these policies are limited by monolingual and/or chauvinistic and racialist attitudes that are indeed irreligious. They lead even religions to denigration by secularists. The biased discriminatory policies have prevented creative initiatives of individuals and of minority communities from making their valid contribution to the progress and development of the country.
The New Constitution should not be permit Legislators to engage in business with the State nor should they be given various licenses to open business ventures, especially in liquor. They are unjust, unfair by the people and have been abused. MPs and all ministers’ monthly emoluments should correspond to their attending sittings of parliament from beginning to end and attending to their official duties. MPs should not only be capable and efficient but also be of good behaviour in the Chamber of Parliament.
Dereliction of duty by MPs and ministers and gallivanting all over the world at the expense of the tax-payer should end forthwith. The people are well aware of the provisions and loopholes that open the floodgates to corruption. The Constitution should be a life-giving instrument significant for all and never become death dealing to the people and a door to corruption of the representatives.
UPHOLDING THE COMMON GOOD
Those who draft, adopt and accept to abide by the Constitution of the land are those who with goodwill show a willingness to cooperate and collaborate in seeing that it is made an effective instrument of people’s solidarity and unity that will help the nation towards progress and peace. It is an instrument that facilitates individual and community relationships among people in a manner that devolves to the well-being and contentment of individuals and communities living in a common homeland and for the common good of all. The perimeters of the Constitution and the guidance and direction it gives and the checks and balances and controls it imposes are for the benefit of all in common and all citizens should accept them, uphold and respect them as the basic law of the land.
The draft Constitution should acknowledge the dignity, honour and self-respect, equality and freedom of all the people and satisfy their legitimate aspirations and hopes so that all sections of the people have a sense of belonging.
BULWARK OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE
Sri Lanka should progress towards the future under the aegis of the law. Not adhering to the law, disdain and scorn of the law, willfully breaking the law, brings about great disorder and chaos to society. Practical contempt of the law by officialdom even in the sanctuaries of law leads the people to stupefaction, confusion and disbelief. Though never excusable, it is no wonder that some impetuous people hastily take the law into their own hands to overly react and protest against unacceptable happenings in otherwise reserved precincts where law and order should prevail.
In any case, it is not the legislature or the executive, whatever high authority they may purport to have conferred on themselves, that could be the arbiter of justice in the land between individual people or groups or between people and the State but the Judiciary. The process of nominating Judges should be such that only persons of unimpeachable integrity are chosen. An Independent Judiciary never subject to arbitrary manipulation by anyone would uphold the law and be the supreme guardian of the law, the democratic bulwark of truth, justice and fairness in all matters of state and government and the public life of the people. Neither the Legislature and the Executive nor any agency of the State should try to subdue or ignore the Judiciary directly or indirectly.
PEOPLE ARE SOVEREIGN
Drafting the New Constitution of course could be done by those most capable of doing it. Yet, if as in the current one the preamble to the Constitution were to appropriately say that the ‘People give themselves a Constitution’, for it not to remain an empty, meaningless, hyperbolic phrase, the people should have had a primary hand in contributing the key provisions to the draft of the Constitution, for the common good of all the people.
Therefore, taking into consideration all this and other relevant matters, the final authority that approves the draft of any constitution should be the people whose sovereignty upholds and legitimizes the Constitution. An approving referendum is absolutely necessary.
If the draft Constitution challenges all sections of the people to rise to an acceptable level of civic responsibility and social culture and restrains all people equally for the sake of social harmony, all could not only be persuaded but proud to give it overwhelming approval.
