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Suddenly the angels are indignantly flapping their wings in their ethereal dovecotes over the President's appointments to the Public Service and Police Commissions. The affable Mr. Karu Jayasuriya hums and haws demanding a special session of Parliament. There are even dark hints of impeaching the President. An unholy alliance of discredited politicians, self-styled constitutional pundits and smug newspaper editors has ganged up against Mr. Rajapaksa in the fanciful hope that they have at last found a stick to beat him with.

These are the very people however who were going into paroxysms of indignation that the various commissions had not been appointed. However, since as stipulated the Constitutional Council is one member short and the minor parties are either unable or more possibly unwilling to make that appointment what option is available?

It is well to remember that the Constitutional Council (CC) was touted by the then Opposition (which incidentally included the JVP) as the panacea for checking the supposedly authoritarian powers of the then President Kumaratunga. However, the CC appeared to have been born under an inauspicious star since the parliamentary parties were at loggerheads over the appointments. Consequently the Commissions coming under the CC such as the Police Commission and the Bribery Commission were more in limbo than in day light.

However what this paralysis points to proceeds well beyond the sensation-mongering newspaper headlines. It points to nothing less than the drastic fracturing of the political fabric, the breakdown of dialogue among the parliamentary parties and the near paralysis of the polity.

Of what worth are we as a nation and a people if our elected representatives in the highest legislature of the land can not arrive at a consensus on appointing an apex body such as the CC which is supposed to comprise eminent public men of reason, sobriety and sound judgement? The sad truth seems to be that even as our politicians piously prate about the need to have checks and balances on the executive they have allowed politics of the most shallow and vulgar kind to determine the appointments to the CC.

The Minister of Constitutional Affairs Dew Gunasekera has pointed out elsewhere that the only remedy is to amend the legislation but for that he needs a two-thirds majority, an impossibility under a Constitution fathered by a party whose remnants are now laughably calling the President a dictator for appointing the Commissions himself. The other remedy suggested by the Minister is to go to courts. So here we go round and round the Hulftsdorp mulberry bush again.

Andare

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