The other side of the eighteenth amendment

" The revolutions and dictatorships are outside constitutions but it may be that some of the Marxists among the pundits are dreaming of a revolution within the constitution. We wish them good luck and also many happy dreams in their deep slumber that has made them dissociated from the public."

by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(September 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The eighteenth amendment has been passed and it is now part of our constitution. As usual the thousand or so pundits in Sri Lanka have been proved wrong again and we still have a democracy in Sri Lanka with of course Messrs. Tissa Vitharana and D E W Gunasekera holding ministerial positions and Mr. Vasudeva Nanayakkara still being an MP.It would be interesting to find out whether they would lose the membership of their respective parties in the name of democracy. The thousand pundits including NGO "intellectuals" the anti Sinhala Buddhist "intellectuals" and such people are crazy of democracy and remind us of the obituary on D E M O’cracy published in an English daily sometime ago.

The democracy continued to live in Sri Lanka even after that notorious obituary and the passing of the eighteenth amendment is not going to do any harm to democracy in Sri Lanka. It appears that democracy has more than nine lives defeating the proverbial cat and it is difficult to kill or destroy democracy. It may be that democracy cannot be killed because it is not living. One cannot destroy something that does not exist. In any event democracy is only a word found in Civics, Government and Political Science text books written by pundits in the western world and copied by our thousand or such people and as far as a villager from Hambanthota District is concerned the only meaning it has is the freedom to vote for one of the candidates put forward by the political parties. The villager has no possibility to vote for a candidate he has in mind and has to settle down for a candidate representing a political party. The choice of a candidate for a political party is outside his powers though the political party concerned in theory would decide on the candidate most likely to get the maximum number of votes at the elections.

However, there are exceptions to this theory and we all know that the UNP is willing to select Ranil Wickremesinghe as their candidate perhaps without any idea of the current popularity of the party or the candidate chosen. After the eighteenth amendment the SLFP has two more candidates to be considered when the Presidential candidate of the party is chosen any time after 2014, assuming that Ms. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga is still a member of the SLFP. If Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga still has aspirations to become the President of the country, she should start her campaign now itself without postponing it to 2014. If Ranil Wickramasinghe continues to be the CEO of the UNP then one does not need to be a soothsayer to "predict" who would be the next President of the country after 2016.

The pundits forget that in the USA a person is barred from being a President for more than two terms only after 1951 after Roosevelt became the President for a fourth time. In any event Roosevelt did not become a dictator but the pundits forget that Hitler became a fascist dictator without serving two terms as President or Chancellor of Germany. It is noteworthy that Hitler became a dictator through the Weimer constitution supposed to be one of the best if not the best constitution that the western pundits have drafted. Those who want to be dictators do not waste time by amending constitutions and all that they have to do is to suspend constitutions. There is no correlation between establishing a dictatorship and the "quality" or the "democratic nature" of the constitution.

The revolutions and dictatorships are outside constitutions but it may be that some of the Marxists among the pundits are dreaming of a revolution within the constitution. We wish them good luck and also many happy dreams in their deep slumber that has made them dissociated from the public. At least Tissa Vitharana, D E W Gunasekera and Vasudeva are still not so much dissociated from the public and they know that Ranil Wickramasinghe and Sarath Fonseka would have been dictators given half a chance. If the latter became the President of the country he would have suspended the constitution just as much Ranil Wickramasinghe is stretching the UNP constitution to the maximum. If he tries to stretch it further the UNP would rupture with dire consequences.

Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse unlike the Ranil Wickramasinghe and Ravi Karunanyaka has no politics outside the party and if at all he could be a populist dictator heading the only party. In that sense it is the UNP that has to make sure that the SLFP does not become the only party in Sri Lanka. Thus Ranil Wickramasinghe has to see to it that the UNP is not destroyed. However, in Sri Lanka a situation has arisen that no party can be a strong party without being a nationalistic party and unfortunately neither Ranil Wickramasinghe nor Ravi Karunanayake has any nationalistic roots and they are not the ideal candidates to lead the UNP. Karu Jayasuriya is not a genuine nationalistic leader and he is supported by some NGOs. Sajith Premadasa does not have the maturity and thus the UNP is without quality leadership personnel at present. Thus one can see many UNPers leaving the party and joining the SLFP.

However, the most important aspect the eighteenth amendment is not the removal of the obstacle to become the President for more than two terms but the amendment of the seventeenth amendment. Thus Mr. Dayananda Dissanayake would be able to retire soon and a Parliamentary Council would be set up in place of the constitutional council. The constitutional council though claimed to be a victory for democracy amounted to a success for the anti Sinhala forces. The thousand pundits who praise each other rejoiced at the seventeenth amendment becoming the law as it gave a definite advantage to the so called minorities. The time when the pundits spread the myth that a two third majority cannot be obtained without the so called minority vote is over vindicating our position that if a party can poll around three fourths of the Sinhala votes it could obtain a two third majority even with the proportional representations. In a number of provincial councils the UPFA obtained a two thirds majority and in the present Parliament it has a near two third majority. The days when the SLFP (or the UNP) had to go behind the so called minority parties in order to form a government are also over and now it has become a case of minority parties supporting the UPFA in order to get some services done.

The nation that had been begun to be built during the time of King Pandukabhaya has to be broadened with the inclusion of so called minorities. It is not the aborted Ceylonese nation first led by the Burghers and then by the English educated Tamils we have in mind but a nation that has already been built. It is not a question of building the nation but a problem of broadening the nation that has been built and in this regard the support given by the so called minority parties for the eighteenth amendment augurs well for the future of the country. The ethnic representation in the legislature and the constitutional council from the nineteenth century to the seventeenth amendment has to be thrown away and we have to make sure that only those who accept the significance of the Sinhala Buddhist history and culture of the country should be appointed to the Parliamentary Council. If anyone of the thousand or so pundits object to this statement we would only invite him/her to come out with any western country that does not have a dominating culture where the citizens irrespective of the ethnicity have to accept the dominance of that culture.