The main provision of the proposed 19th Amendment to the Constitution is Article 70A (I) which states that to dissolve Parliament a resolution with a 2/3rd majority should be passed. What this effectively means is that Parliament will run for its fixed term of five (05) years. This is designed to take away the dissolution power of the President and give it to Parliament. Legislature/Parliament is the reflection of the will of the people. The right to dissolve Parliament, then, must also lie with the people, not the whims and fancies of an Executive President.

This amendment locks the President to keep the Parliament going for five years. Therefore, I would say that people have been strengthened by this. So what this Amendment basically does is to fix the time period, unless of course there is a resolution with a 2/3 majority to call for an election.

The 1978 Constitution was brought about by a singular individual, ex-President J.R. Jayewardene.

In December 1966, J.R. Jayewardene delivered an important seminal address to the twenty-second annual sessions of the Ceylon Association for the Advancement of Science. It was indicative of the route that constitution-making would possibly take in the decade to follow. Regarding stable executive government, J.R. Jayawardena observed:

"Our cabinet, the executive government, is chosen from the legislature and throughout its life is dependent on its maintaining a majority therein. We have followed the British Constitution in this respect. In some countries, the executive is chosen directly by the people and is not dependent on the legislature. Such an executive is a strong executive, seated in power for a fixed number of years, not subject to the whims and fancies of an elected legislature; not afraid to take correct but unpopular decisions because of censure from its parliamentary party. This seems to me a very necessary requirement in a developing country faced with grave problems such as we are faced with today."

This was in 1966, twelve years before the presidential system was introduced. However, even a man of his wisdom failed to foresee a situation where the President does not belong to the party that controls parliament.

The President has a moral obligation not to interfere in the day to day affairs of the present government. There have been certain incidents over the last nine months which has unfortunately made the relationship between the executive and the legislative body extremely tenuous. This amendment is very transparent and very frank. It does not have a hidden agenda. It says quite openly that the objective is to bring racial harmony through political negotiation, economic revival and stability. For this we need a Parliament that is fixed by the time limit given by the Constitution to achieve this agenda.

President Jayewardene based this present Constitution on the French model. The French model is very clear in that the Prime Minister has more freedom to run the executive arms of the government. For example Article 21 of the French Constitution says that the Prime Minister shall direct the operations of the Government. He shall be responsible for the nation to ensure the implementation of legislation. The Prime Minister has powers to make regular appointments to civil and military posts. So it is very clear from this that the French Prime Minister has more power than the President in our model. Here we have a President who interferes and obstructs the nature and functioninig of government in every way.

This is why it is clear that unless there is a fresh political approach and thinking in this exercise our whole system can degenerate into unending clashes, resulting in a very unhealthy economic and social environment.

One could argue that the UNF government has brought this amendment to suit their own needs. However, we have to learn from experiences in the past. There are MPs from the PA who express the view that the letter given to the speaker by President should be legalized. This Amendment also seeks to achieve the same purpose. This fixes the tenure of the term of the Parliament. It does not do anything else. I have reservations about limiting the conscience vote only to this Amendment. I feel that the members of Parliament should be given a conscience vote on all Amendments to the Constitution, so that they can weigh the pros and cons of each amendment and decide.

As a person involved in politics with my late father, Gamini Dissanayake, and the late Lalith Athulathmudali who opposed the presidential system, I would be very happy personally if the old executive model comes back,where Parliament is given absolute power. This is difficult in reality because the political system is locked in. It forbids cohabitation. The presidential system has brutalized our society. And at the end of the day we have a President and we have a Prime Minister who have different political agendas, whose approach to government, to economics, and to politics is different. They see things differently. One’s approach is very professional and the other’s is not. That is the crux of the matter.

I would also like to offer some observations on the 18th Amendment. We have a Constitutional Council. Members of the Constitutional Council are immune from legal proceedings. I am personally against that. I feel that no member of society should enjoy legal immunity. There is however an argument for this amendment. The Constitutional Council is made up of people from a broad cross section of society with various political views, from various political parties and the society. The argument is that they have to be given a free hand to do what is necessary. It is argued that they would not make a mistake. I’m not comfortable with this argument. The right of the individual to sue anybody for any wrong should be protected.