President, TNA powwow on APRC

By P. Krishnaswamy

President Mahinda Rajapaksa will shortly meet Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians and leaders of other Tamil political parties represented in parliament for discussions on the present political situation. It is likely that the discussions will also touch upon the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) proposals authoritative sources told the Sunday Observer. The meeting that was to take place last week has been rescheduled for another date as TNA leader R. Sampanthan MP is out of the country, sources said.

Prof. Tissa Vitharana, Minister of Science and Technology and Chairman of the APRC said that consensus on the final document was reached among political parties that attended the APRC deliberations and he would now engage himself on bringing the main opposition UNP into the process so that their input could be included in the proposals. The UNP quit the APRC deliberations in 2007 expressing certain grievances and he was now involved in presenting these grievances to the APRC, the Minister said, adding that TNA which never attended the deliberations and the JVP that quit halfway through, would also be persuaded to involve themselves in the process.

Explaining the salient features of the proposals Minister Tissa Vitharana said that the proposals were somewhat based on the British experience of devolution of power where they resolved the Northern Ireland problem. The APRC visited Britain and extensively studied their experience. We are trying to devolve adequate powers to the provinces to fulfil the just aspirations of the Tamil people with clear demarcation of powers separately to the provinces and the centre under a `unitary system’, the Minister said. It is evident from the resolution of the Northern Ireland problem that under a unitary system adequate powers can be devolved to the provinces to fulfil the aspirations of the people concerned and the APRC has considered that possible, he also said.

The final document proposes repealing the executive powers of the President. We have considered two options with regard to trimming down the executive powers of the President. Either the President can be made answerable to the parliament or as President elected by the people he will be directly responsible for exercise of certain important functions, like the former Israeli system, he said. “But these were options that had to be discussed with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and decisions taken after such talks”, he remarked. Meanwhile Constitutional Affairs Minister Dew Gunasekara commenting on different views expressed by political leaders over repealing the President’s executive powers said that election manifesto of both the former People’s Alliance and the ruling UPFA have insisted on it. Even the `Mahinda Chintanaya’ incoporates that policy, he said. Under the Westminster system with the then Prime Minister as the head of the state and the country had successfully defeated the 1962 coup and the 1971 insurrection, he said.