‘National List, Executive Presidency out’
By Manjula Fernando
The parliamentary Steering Committee on the new constitution, will
begin discussions on the alternative option for the executive presidency
shortly.
In the backdrop of President Maithripala Sirisena reiterating his
stance that the Executive Presidency must be abolished during his term
in office, recently, the steering committee has decided to take it up
for discussion soon.
Constitution Steering Committee member and MP Dr. Jayampathy
Wickremaratne said, the President’s statement was welcome news. “Earlier
there was some ambiguity but now the stance is clear and the two main
political parties have come on board to support it,” he said
Refuting allegations that there is a secret draft of the new
constitution which accommodates Western dictates, he said, “Not a single
Article of the constitution has been drafted. Even a formal drafting
committee is yet to be appointed.”
One of the key pillars in the constitution-making process,
Dr.Wickremaratne said without the preliminary agreements on the basic
structure it was not possible to move on to the drafting stage.
He said deliberations on the ‘nature of the state’ has been put off
for the last stages since they did not want to be bogged down by
contentious issues and therefore it was wrong to say the government was
conniving to create a secular state or a federal state. He said however,
there is definite progress on the subjects of electoral reforms and the
devolution of powers to the peripheries with minor and major parties
willing to find common ground.
Wickremaratne said most likely there will not be a national list in a
future electoral system.
The reports of the five sub-committees on Fundamental Rights,
Judiciary, Law and Order, Centre Periphery Relations, Public Finance is
due in the first week of August.
Parliament was converted into a Constitutional Assembly(CA) early
this year to deliberate on a new Constitution, scrapping the executive
presidency and the first sitting of the CA was held in April. All
political parties in Parliament were represented in the Steering
Committee and the five Sub Committees on the new constitution. |