Groundviews

On the Speaker’s inaction: “Flimsy, unforgivable excuses”

Groundviews

Photo via News1st

On 4th November 2018, a tweet by Indi Samarajiva noted that the Speaker wouldn’t act to reconvene Parliament.

Constitutional expert, Lecturer in Public Law, Edinburgh Law School & Director, Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law, Dr. Asanga Welikala, provided this vital context in a series of tweets published on 4th November, in response to the Speaker’s inaction and passivity. He also noted separately that the Speaker’s actions were “absolutely terrible” and that “looking for flimsy excuses like this in the middle of a major attack on parliamentary democracy is just unforgivable”.

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I can see how legal formalities like gazetting a recall can seem like major hurdles to a timid, unimaginative and overcautious personality. But this is a constitutional crisis where we need principled but bold leadership. At stake: the country’s 87 year old democracy and future.

Only the President has the legal power to prorogue and summon. But he has acted unconstitutionally by ignoring the convention of consulting PM and Speaker. And his action is for the unconstitutional purpose of subverting the lawful government.

This prorogation, for which there is no recent precedent in the democratic Commonwealth, is strictly legal but clearly unconstitutional. When one actor acts in this way, it is the duty of all others to help curtail the harm to the constitution. Ranil is doing this, Karu is not.

Speaker Perera in 2003, as the sole and final judge of the laws and customs of Parliament and the guardian of its rights and privileges, established that a presidential prorogation cannot have the effect of extinguishing the legislature. That is precisely what’s happening now.

This is how Kings claiming divine rights used to act in pre-democratic Britain. Or how the Governor General of Pakistan acted in 1954, leading to six decades of military rule, successive coups, and the destruction of democracy.

The President has violated the law of the constitution by acting against it as well as the values and conventions of the constitution. Parliament has been shut down in order to legitimise an illegal transfer of power, through criminal means.
The rights and privileges of MPs as the sovereign people’s representatives as well as the constitutional role of Parliament in holding the extrovert account has in this way been completely denied.

The Parliament that will meet at the convenience of the President and the illegal PM after the prorogation will be one that is not representative of the people’s will registered at the last general election, but one that has been corrupted into subornation of the executive.

To talk about formalities like gazettes in this kind of life and death struggle of the soul of the nation is to fiddle while the country burns. It is a total abdication of the Speaker’s underlying constitutional duty to serve the sovereign people by protecting their democracy.

The Speaker has the express support of the majority of MPs from multiple parties, to recall Parliament in order that the constitution itself can be saved.He has the responsibility to defend the powers, rights and privileges of the House. A minor legal formality cannot denude this.

For these reasons, the Speaker lack of leadership and action has made him into an accessory of violations of both the constitution and the criminal law. He has stood by when Parliament was being decapitated. He has failed both the House as well as the People.

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Updated: November 5, 2018

Pressure mounted on Jayasuriya, as the Sirisena-Rajapaksa faction continued to swear in a Cabinet, despite criticism that the appointments were unconstitutional.

The following day, Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya issued a strongly worded statement – the first in which he took a definitive stand since October 26.

Despite Jayasuriya noting that he had “no choice” but to recognise the previously elected Government and Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister, UPFA MP Dinesh Gunawardena assumed duties as Leader of the House.

In a return salvo, UPFA MP Susil Premajayantha promised “serious consequences” if Jayasuriya acted in an “undemocratic” manner.

Parliament remains prorogued as at the time of writing.

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