Report on constitution-making process handed over to PM: 

'Wider constitution reform urged'

By Ranil Wijayapala

A comprehensive dialogue should be initiated by the media on the constitution-making process, taking the recommendations by the Public Representation Committee on Constitutional Reforms for wider constitution reform, without criticising some of its recommendations in isolation, the Public Representation Committee headed by Lal Wijenayake said on Friday.

Addressing the media at Visumpaya, Colombo he said the Committee which began collecting public views on the constitution-making process, handed over its final report to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Chairman of the Steering Committee on Constitution Reforms to facilitate the constitution-making process.

"The whole report compiled by the committee after obtaining the public views countrywide aimed at making a comprehensive proposals to create constitution to eliminate all forms of discrimination and ensure equity among alll communities," he said.

He pointed out that the committee had divided opinions on many issues, such as the secular nature of the state, unitary nature of the state and on the issue of changing the national flag and when compiling the recommendations they had clearly indicated whether the decision was unanimous or a divided opinion.

For instance the committee had a divided opinion on the secular and unitary nature of the state and also on the issue of changing the national flag and the report in its footnotes had clearly mentioned the committee members who had different opinions.

"When discussing the nature of the state, we have not used the word federalism and even the people from Jaffna who made their representation to the committee did not make any demand to have a federal state," Wijenayake added.

"In our recommendations we have pointed out the necessity to expand the fundamental rights of the people and recommended to have 34 fundamental rights. In the sense of discussing the rights of the marginalised groups we also discussed the rights of the people with different sexual orientation. We discussed this because we need to discuss the rights of all marginalised groups. That won't be a big issue at present but it will become a issue in the future and we have to be prepared to face that situation. But some people see this as an effort to legalising homosexuality in Sri Lanka," he added.

"To ensure the rights of the people we recommend an Anti Discrimination Commission too in our report," he said. The Secretary to the Committee Winston Pathiraja said "Criticisms are made without reading the report properly and by using distorted information.We need to have have a fruitful debate on these issues finally to have a greater Constitution," he said.