COLOMBO: Several features, including curbing the Sri Lankan President's power to sack the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, have been included in the draft of a constitutional amendment bill that seeks to reduce the concentration of power in one person, justice minister Wijeyedasa Rajapakshe has said.
He said the text of the draft of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was changed after the ouster of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. "The former president wanted to retain the power to sack the prime minister and the cabinet as he wished. Since his departure we have changed that so the president can't remove the Prime Minister and the Cabinet," Rajapakshe said.
His comments came as he submitted to Parliament the constitutional amendment bill to clip the powers of the president, a key demand of protesters calling for political reforms and solutions to the country's worst economic crisis. Rajapaksa fled the country to the Maldives after an uprising against him on July 9 and four days later he resigned after reaching Singapore. Now Thailand has given him temporary asylum in the country.
The minister said the reforming of presidential powers was in line with the demand of the protesters who carried on a relentless campaign for over four months demanding the resignation of Rajapaksa for his bungling of the ongoing economic crisis. He said for a long time since Sri Lanka adopted the Constitution in 1978, the need to reduce too much power in one person was a major demand.
"The demand was to either abolish the presidential system or prune powers to make parliament empowered," he said. The 22nd Amendment was formulated amid the ongoing economic turmoil in the country which also caused a political crisis.
Sri Lanka is facing the worst economic crisis since independence which has led to an acute shortage of essential items like food, medicine, cooking gas and fuel across the country. The street protests had been triggered across the country over the poor handling of the economic crisis and the lack of accountability to it. Protesters demanded the resignation of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and political reforms.
