In Sri Lanka, two candidates promise to abolish executive presidency

Sri Lanka's presidential candidates vow to abolish executive presidency, a long-standing unfulfilled promise in the country's politics.

Ahead of Sri Lanka’s September 21 presidential election, two leading aspirants have promised to abolish the executive presidency, reviving a familiar pre-poll pledge that many political leaders have made in the past, but none has kept.

Also read: The all-powerful Sri Lankan Presidency

Leader of Opposition Sajith Premadasa and the Leader of the Opposition National People’s Power alliance Anura Kumara Dissanayake have both declared that they would do away with the executive presidential system and replace it with a parliamentary system. The two contenders for the country’s top office are challenging incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is yet to make any explicit statement in his campaign regarding the controversial system of governance that his uncle and former President J.R. Jayewardene introduced in 1978, just after Sri Lanka liberalised its economy.

In nearly five decades since, the island nation’s elected presidents have enjoyed unfettered powers and significant immunity that come with the office, and repeatedly resorted to decisions widely deemed authoritarian.

In a collective statement on Tuesday (August 20, 2024), prominent scholars, researchers, and activists in Sri Lanka sought a firm, public commitment from all the candidates contesting presidential polls to abolish executive presidency. The experience of 46 years of the operation of the 1978 Constitution “shows that the executive presidential system has not delivered on any of the aims for which it was introduced: accelerated and sustained economic growth and development; communal harmony; and political stability,” they contended.

“Executive presidentialism has only had a negligible impact on development. It has worsened rather than improved peace and stability, by accelerating ethnic conflict and making our political system prone to frequent crises,” while allowing “authoritarianism, corruption, and incompetence to trump the common good of Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans,” they observed.

In a media conference organised by civil society members in Colombo, Deepika Udagama, Professor of Law from the University of Peradeniya said: “The executive presidency is a cancer in our body politic…such concentration of power bodes ill for democracy in our country.”