What is the executive presidential system under the 1978 Constitution? A President directly elected for a fixed term is the Head of State and the Head of Government who exercises the executive…
With the enactment of the Twentieth Amendment, Sri Lanka embarks yet again down the fraught path of authoritarian presidentialism. Whether this latest adventure ends in a democratic nightmare, or is as fleeting…
As the Twentieth Amendment Bill is brought before Parliament – and challenged in the Supreme Court – there are two critical sets of questions we need to seriously consider. These are, firstly,…
By Asanga Welikala and Roshan de Silva-Wijeyeratne The election of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in November 2019 marked the beginning of a new era of a Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist ascendancy in Sri Lanka. The…
The governing party’s general election campaign is centred on obtaining a two-thirds majority in the next Parliament. It is expected that the governing party will fulfil its wish – if not directly,…
Photo courtesy The COVID-19 crisis took hold in Sri Lanka at a time when Parliament stood dissolved ahead of a general election. The gravity of the public health emergency, and what it…
President Sirisena is evidently unhappy that a Select Committee of Parliament has been appointed to investigate the circumstances that led to the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks. UPFA MPs have not joined the…
The Prime Minister has gone on record with the international media saying that, even though Sri Lankan authorities were aware of Sri Lankan jihadists who had returned from Syria who might be…
Sri Lanka experienced its worst terrorist attack since the end of the war on 21 April 2019. The country is still reeling from the scale and lethality of the multiple explosions, and…
In a week of high-stakes litigation in the two highest courts in the land, a key question in the public discussion over the continuing constitutional crisis in Sri Lanka has focused on…
Since 26 October, virtually every gambit and calculation of the instigators of the Sri Lankan constitutional coup have failed. Initially, they relied on the element of surprise to cover up the illegality…
Further exacerbating the constitutional crisis that he precipitated a fortnight ago, President Sirisena issued a proclamation purporting to dissolve Parliament on 9thNovember 2018. Having prorogued Parliament and then lost the gamble to…
There have been intense public debates over the meaning and interpretation of the Constitution, and especially the far-reaching changes introduced by the Nineteenth Amendment in 2015, since the dramatic and ongoing attempt…
There were three dramatic announcements on the evening of Friday 26th October 2018 from the Presidential Secretariat, which occurred in the following order: (a) the announcement of the withdrawal of the UPFA from…
There has recently been a flurry of comment and speculation about whether, due to a technical flaw in the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (2015), former President Rajapaksa may actually be eligible…
