There is sentiment in this country for radical change, and we can’t get away from it,Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said yesterday as he placed his hopes of further strengthening unity in the country on a new Constitution.
Politics has changed very much since the time Dudley Senanayake, people do not have the same issues with devolution as they used to, said the Prime Minister as he discussed the changing nature of power between the centre and periphery, delivering the 17th Dudley Senanayake Memorial Lecture at Temple Trees.
“In the present framework giving devolution is not an issue, it is how the provincial executive is going to make use of it. Can they make the best use of it? Those are some of the issues”, the PM explained.
Dudley Senanayake, he said opposed the Executive Presidency at the time and said the British system of governance was good enough but given that the 1972 Constitution allowed the Prime Minister powers to remove the President, Wickremesinghe said that many believed that the Executive Presidency was needed to ensure government stability.
“In the last decade however we saw the further strengthening of the Presidency, except during when I was PM under President Kumaratunga.The Presidency was strengthened at the expense of Parliament and the public control of finance by Parliament was only in name. As a result our debt servicing by 2020 has risen to just Rs 4.2 trillion”, he said.
The Prime Minister explained that there was general consensus that the powers of the Executive needed to be reduced. He hoped that by the end of August the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly will be able to produce an interim report. “After the debate in the Constitutional Assembly, we will be able to reach a consensus on the final report”, he said.
The Prime Minister explained that they had many questions to answer on the nature of the Presidency, the relationship between the centre and the periphery, power sharing, stability of Parliament, electoral system and the manner in which the President and Parliament would be elected.
“The nature of the executive and the person exercising executive power have to be looked anew. We cannot go back to the pre 70s Constitution because today we have a devolution of power and we are committing ourselves to maximum devolution of power without changing the character of the state”, he said. The people want a modern government, peace and development, said the PM and added that a proper report would be able to bring about a stable democratic order acceptable to everyone in the country.