The holy and the unholy

Editorial-November 28, 2013,

Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith has, at a meeting with the UNP Leadership Council members, lambasted an alleged government move to set up a ‘casino city’ north of Colombo, while calling for the abolition of the executive presidency among other things. Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera, too, has flayed the government for trying to open up gambling dens. This kind of activism on the part of religious leaders is to be appreciated at a time when the Opposition is in disarray and the UPFA juggernaut is careening down the hill. There has to be some countervailing force against a government with a steamroller majority.

One couldn’t agree with the Cardinal more! But, the question is where to find a principled political leader who really wants to scrap the executive presidency. One may have to conduct a search for such a person with the help of a lighted lantern in broad daylight a la Diogenes. Politicians want that institution abolished only when they are in the Opposition. That was a main plank of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s platform during the 2005 presidential election campaign. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga also made a similar pledge before coming to power. Gen. Sarath Fonseka promised to do away with the executive presidency when he challenged President Rajapaksa in the presidential race in 2010, but he changed his tune subsequently when he thought victory was within sight.

It is not being argued that the executive presidency should be retained or the Opposition should stop campaigning against it. The point we are trying to make is that none of the present-day politicians could be trusted as they have at heart anything but the national interest. Democrats who fight for people’s rights metamorphose into dictators upon being voted into power or when their interests are threatened even while they are in the Opposition as could be seen from the current power struggle in the UNP. Luckily for politicians their election manifestoes aren’t legally binding and their promises are not taken seriously by the voting public.

Urging the incumbent president to abolish the executive presidency is an exercise in futility. Politicians thirst for power, and now that the presidential term limit has been removed, no president will ever want to let go of executive powers. However, if the Opposition gets its act together it could reduce the executive president to a mere figurehead.

When J. R. Jayewardene was President, Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa lamented in Parliament that a peon had more powers than he. But, the executive president becomes a peon to all intents and purposes when his or her party loses power in parliament; the prime minister becomes the de facto president in such a situation. We saw this happen in 2001, when the UNP-led UNF formed a government; President Kumaratunga was not only reduced to a peon, as it were, but also harassed at Cabinet meetings which she chaired ex officio.

The UNF government blundered by capitulating to the LTTE and compromising national security in the process. Else, it could have checkmated CBK without enabling her to use the draconian constitutional provision which allows the President to dissolve a government one year after its formation, to sack it. If the UNP rectifies its mistakes and works itself into the ground again, it may be able to turn the tables on the government as it did in 2001.

One cannot but agree with the Cardinal on the need to oppose government’s efforts to build what the Opposition calls a casino economy with the help of some wealthy foreigners. But, what about the existing casinos run by locals? We see quite a number of them with ornate portals guarded by bouncers in the city. Why are the vociferous anti-casino activists silent on these places? Most of all, horse racing has ruined many families whose heads bring home not the bacon but the so-called race paper. Why hasn’t there been any campaign against ubiquitous bookies? Let these questions be posed to the religious and political leaders going at full tilt to keep Packer at bay while their campaign against social evils is commended.