JRJ’s grandson, Pradip Jayewardene says the Executive Presidency was not to be held to whims and fancies of the Legislature
“The Executive Presidency was not to be held to the whims and fancies of the Legislature. By trying to do that through the 19th Amendment, we have created a political crisis. We can’t change this system through amendments,” said former President J.R. Jayewardene’s grandson and current UPFA Member of the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), Pradip Jayewardene, in an interview with the Daily News.
He said the UNP, having moved away from the original principles of the Executive Presidency and ideologies of the former President, has now created a bleak future for itself.
Excerpts follow:
Q: The current political crisis, in a way, has been a result of attempts made to amend the Constitution your grandfather brought. Did that make the situation worse?
A: We have already gone into a Presidential System. You can’t bring in amendments and change it; you can’t make a system change. You have to rewrite the whole Constitution which they didn’t do, they just went half way.
We first hear about the 1978 Constitution in 1966 when, at the Ceylon Association for the Advancement of Science, J R Jayewardene (JRJ), as Minister of State, made a speech and detailed the thinking and rationale for an Executive Presidency. Two things influenced him at the time: one was that he felt that because of Parliamentary democracy and change of power balances, legislators were spending a lot of time just focusing on keeping their Parliamentary majority intact. The other factor was that he himself was the architect of breaking the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government by moving Members of Parliament in 1965. He said if this is all it takes to break a government, to move MPs from one side to the other, what is the use of a system like that?
In addition, he said economic independence had not been achieved even though we had gained independence. So he proposed a strong Executive for a fixed number of years, free from the whims and fancies of Parliament. In 1972, after the 1971 insurrection, he proposed this system at the Constitutional Council in detail. At that time, some in the UNP, the Dudley Senanayake group opposed it, though Premadasa supported it. But Sirimavo opposed it and it was not adopted.
If it had been passed, Sirimavo would have been the first Executive President. This is the first myth that needs to be broken that the Executive Presidential system was created for JRJ himself. He felt the need for the Executive Presidency much earlier.
Fast forward to 1978, he asked for a mandate for this and received it
We have had this for 40 years now and have been able to achieve economic growth.
There is a lot of propaganda saying that this is not a democratic system, but in my experience this is a system that has preserved democracy. When you take Parliamentary democracy, JRJ in 1972 said that out of 100 democracies, 98 have failed. He said most have become military regimes and once military rule sets in, it is extremely difficult to get back to democracy.
Since we went into the Presidential system, we have not had a threat of military rule, but when we had the Parliamentary system, we did have a coup attempt by the military in 1966. So in my view, the Executive Presidency has preserved democracy, not diminished it.
You hear some say that we need a dictatorship to solve the problems of this country. These are so-called intelligent people saying this because they feel that the government is not acting fast enough or tough enough, but you don’t want it acting tougher than the Executive Presidency. To go beyond that is dictatorship where you will get fast action for a short time, but it is a downward slope.
Q: Does the UNP too now propose that the Executive Presidency be done away with?
A. The UNP is no longer under the control of traditional UNPers or the traditional values of the UNP. From the time Ranil Wickremesinghe took over the party, he has brought in his own view of neo-liberal policies.
Due to that many, hundreds of good UNPers have left. If you look at the SLFP, many are former UNPers and those who can’t digest Left politics have stayed out. This group [Ranil Wickremesinghe’s] has taken control of the UNP and changed the constitution and removed all democracy from the party. The UNP has a very strong constitution and my grandfather described it as a “dictatorship within a democracy.” But there was still democracy as once a year, the leadership comes to vote at the annual sessions, but Wickremesinghe took it out, so he became the UNP leader for life. That is very dangerous and then you can’t profess democracy when your party is run under a dictatorship.
Q: Even former President JRJ did that in 1978 when he opened up the economy?
A. Yes, he did and famously said, “Let the robber barons come.” No one is saying we don’t want foreign capital to come in, but there are limits to how much you open up and there needs to be some regulation. JRJ never opened access to our land, utilities and key resources.
He was also a proponent of land ceilings. In 1972, when he wanted to join Sirimavo’s government, he agreed to land ceilings. President Premadasa was also the same, he was strong nationalist. Although Premadasa privatised estates, he did not let foreign companies take them over on 99 year leases. That was done by Chandrika Bandaranaike.
Q: Why do you think there is such opposition to the Executive Presidency, if it has worked?
A. It has to be said that those who oppose it are doing so without understanding its positives and negatives. They are just calling for its abolition. Governments, while enjoying the powers of the Presidency, kept saying it is not a good system.
There were several things we did to damage the original system. Firstly, the proportional representation system in its original form did not have you campaign throughout the district. You had an electorate, you campaigned in it, and the party made a list for that district. In that list, if you were senior or had a large electorate, you would be higher up. And if you won your electorate, you were able to go to Parliament.
In 1988-89, Lalith Athulathmudali brought in an amendment to remove this electorate basis and asked people to campaign in the whole district. It was advantageous for him because he was well known. But everyone now had to do so too and then it increased the cost exponentially for candidates and they had to find the money from somewhere and black money started to come into politics.
In the first round, those who generated black money started financing the politicians. In the second round, the people who were generating the black money said why should we be paying politicians, we can get into Parliament ourselves and that is where we are today.
Secondly, the minimum qualification for political parties to enter Parliament was 12.5 percent and President Premadasa changed it to 5 percent to allow Muslim parties to come in. That has created at present 68 small parties which are all vying for a piece of kingmakership. They come in, but don’t do much for the country.
Thirdly, it was to remove the barrier for MPs to cross over from one party to another. That was done during President Chandrika Bandaranaike’s time. In India, you need the support of 25 percent of the membership for an MP to cross over.
Fourthly, President Mahinda Rajapaksa moved away from the original thinking of having the Executive Presidency for a fixed term by introducing the 18th Amendment.
JRJ had proposed that the Executive Presidency would be there for a fixed number of years, to do what is needed for the development of the country, “to be able to take correct and unpopular decisions free from the whims and fancies of the Legislature.”
So when Mahinda Rajapaksa removed the term limit, the opposition united to overturn the government. They brought in the 19th Amendment and brought the term limit back, but by doing that, they took away the second part of JRJ’s original intention, which was to keep the Executive free from the whims and fancies of the Legislature. When you bring the Executive back into the Legislature, you have the situation we have now.
I believe the Executive Presidency still has the power to bring this situation under control, but the way it stands now, we will have to go back and seek the people’s mandate. Only that will solve the crisis. Go for a general election and bring in a new set of legislators, then no one can argue with that.
Q: The UNP also plans to bring in the 20th Amendment to abolish the Executive Presidency?
A. If they had followed President JRJ’s thinking on this, we would not have had this situation. There are 10 points he made to a university convocation ceremony in 1978. He said, “I am the first elected Executive President, head of state, head of government and since many others would succeed me, in my term of office, I wish to create precedents that are worthy of following.”
“First, I will only act through the Cabinet and Parliament preserving the Parliamentary system without diminishing their powers. Second, I will not create a group known as the ‘President’s men and women’ who will influence me.”
This was on a request by Prof. Wilson to set up a separate office known as the ‘President’s Office’ like in the US where the President has his own team. He opposed it. He said, “I will not appoint advisors and I will not create a separate office. I will always work though the Cabinet.”
But we very clearly saw during President Rajapaksa’s time, advisors being appointed, a host of them, and, in effect, he created a ‘President’s Office’. And this was why there was so much dissatisfaction in the Cabinet and there were breakaways in 2014.
President Sirisena is much less so, but former Prime Minister Wickremesinghe created his own team with the Cabinet Committee on Economic Management (CCEM) which was outside elected representation, taking decisions. They were bypassing Cabinet.
Q: How do you see the situation moving forward?
A. A general election is the best option. There is precedence in Australia where in 1975 when the Governor General sacked the PM and appointed a caretaker PM. The former PM then went to Parliament and tried to get a vote of confidence and he was successful. But before the Speaker could deliver the decision on the vote of confidence to the Governor General, he dissolved Parliament and went in for an election. A new government thereafter came into power. It happened within a short time period and things were resolved.
But we have got ourselves into a bind because of the Supreme Court decision. But I think after December 7, this will start to resolve.
Q: Having spoken about your grandfather, you are now ironically representing the SLFP?
A. I don’t think my grandfather could have been in this UNP. It is not the UNP of my grandfather. Their policies are against the grain of the original UNP, and that is why they have gone down to 35 percent now. Only the diehard UNPers remain now.
Q: The UNP has once again said that they would field a common candidate at the next election. This is the third time they are doing this instead of fielding a UNPer?
If he (Ranil Wickremesinghe) keeps going on like this, the UNP will become a fringe party unable to form a government without a coalition. And many are opportunistic. To bring back the original UNP will take a long time and the leadership will have to change, and you have to go back to the fundamentals of the UNP. Today, it has very little grassroots support. The only person who can truly claim to have grassroots support is Mahinda Rajapaksa and with him joining, the SLFP’s issues have been resolved.
Further, if you look at Ranil Wickremesinghe’s behaviour over the last few decades, he has been trying to wipe away the legacy of JRJ. In 2001 when he was PM, he brought in a gazette to close down the Mahaweli project and it was President Sirisena, who, when he was Agriculture Minister, revived it.
A few months ago Ranil Wickremesinghe brought in a gazette to close down the JRJ Centre. He stopped its rental income and instead, he said he wanted to establish an institute to train Parliamentarians with funding from a German political group. The Act for this was drafted and brought into Parliament, but cancelled with the recent events. He also held a meeting at the JRJ Centre and said this is the last meeting of the JRJ Centre. And now, the Executive Presidency.
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