The urgent need for constitutional reform

Featured image courtesy Women and Media Collective

LIONEL GURUGE on 02/03/2017

Sri Lanka was ushered into Independence under the Soulbury Constitution in 1948, followed by the Constitution of 1972, making the current Constitution, the second Republican Constitution of Independent Sri Lanka. The Soulbury Constitution, the 1972 Constitution, the 1978 Constitution and the Draft Constitution of 2000 followed the same tangent of being based on ethnic prioritisation and division with no other underlying principle or core values governing them. Despite the Soulbury Constitution being widely speculated to be progressive and fair to minorities, the current constitution and the 19 amendments that followed it have not been able to maintain the same progressive approach. As such, this document has earned widespread criticism and even evolved as a premise that led to an ethnic war that spanned over three decades.

The urgent need for constitutional reform.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd