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The
poll and its ramifications That doesn't mean that people aren't pessimistic whether we will ever find leaders to change this country's wretched contemporary course. In his long-winded judgment, the chief justice has taken almost half of the text to cast aspersions at Constitutional amendments that led to this 'Gordian knot' as he adverts in his order. Without mincing his words, but without naming names, the CJ says that it was late President J. R. Jayewardene and his advisers who used the law to twist things to their political advantage. Their instrument? The "mandate of the people' which was a licence to stomp upon sacred institutions and fundamental tenets of democracy and good governance. With great felicity of language, he shows how these amendments were used at the whim and pleasure of the rulers of the time to perpetuate their reign and their writ to govern. But some of the reasoning in the judgment is arguable, such as when it delves into the causes that triggered the northern insurgency -- tracing these to political gerrymandering exclusively. The
underlining morale of this judgment, however, is something that
one can endorse if not identify with. The first lesson drawn is
that it is the job of the courts to unravel and simplify complicated
matters -- and not compound them. The inevitable conclusion of all of this hullabaloo is fundamental -- and it is that a President is elected for a period of six years. To any layman,it means that if the elections were in December 1999 a period of six years would mean an election is due by December 2005. If any incumbent President wishes to call for early elections and take political advantage of that exercise, as this President did in 1999, he or she cannot do so on the basis of a convoluted constitutional amendment and start playing new math with her second term of office. All the legal arguments and Constitutional punditry pales into insignificance in the face of common logic. The Supreme Court has not lost its focus on the Constitution, nor its bearings that seem firmly founded on reality. Now, having gone through this unnecessary experience - where the Elections Commissioner was also of this same view, and the matter went to court notwithstanding - it might be considered when future Constitutions or amendments are being drafted, to stipulate a fixed term of office for the President, as in the US. This is so that the people will know when an election will be held and when a President takes office, without having to keep calculators in their pockets to work out dates. That's if the nation is still in favour of an Executive Presidency in the first place. There will also be the added benefit of having to do away with the need to have purported swearing-in ceremonies. No doubt this decision comes hard on the incumbent President who believed she had one more year to stamp her legacy upon the country. Unfortunately, her one closing act has been to award herself some state land through the cabinet she heads. We
must now also look towards a short Presidential election campaign.
The electorate can look forward to a hard fought but clean contest and we daresay, may the better man win. But we must look at the elections and beyond. It's crucial that both candidates keep a close eye on their security, as there may be certain quarters that have a grander scheme in their minds than seeing the next President simply being elected. Both contenders must strive to open up to issue-based politics as opposed to the long-tradition of the politics of brag and bluster. They must strive to focus both during the campaign and thereafter on the common issues that face their countrymen, such as the northern revolt, the issue of unemployment the cost of living and crime. Let the mud-slinging posters, violence and poltical slang on public platforms be dumped into Sri Lanka’s political history. If we are to look beyond a presidential election, where this fractured island, both the North and the South, is united, this is the time for a new beginning. |
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