Jayampathy Wickramaratne, Red-Herrings And Straw-Men

(Dr) Jayampathy Wickramaratne, President’s Counsel, is absolutely spot on when he says “The doctrine of necessity is not a panacea for all ills, not a “kokatath thailaya” (see his article, ‘Doctrine of Necessity: Can it be invoked to govern without Parliament?). If indeed ‘doctrine of necessity’ is taken as a panacea for all ills, we would not need to have laws. ‘Necessity’ can be conjured at will by those who have the power to cite and, as is quite possible, benefit from its execution. This is why any discussion of the ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ is attended by a consideration of ‘Constitutional Exceptionalism.’ Sadly (and not unexpectedly, considering track record) Wickramaratne utters not a word about the latter.

- Malinda Seneviratne

Now Wickramaratne is a politician. He represented the United National Party (UNP) as a National List Member of Parliament. Keep that in mind. All claims, arguments and dismissals are framed by party interest, we have to conclude. In other words, he is no independent expert on things constitutional. Just to relieve any doubts on this, let me briefly flag some key plays by Wickramaratne.

His party (possibly with much input from its resident Constitutional Expert) dumped Supreme Court objection to the draft 19th Amendment. The version that became law deliberately left ‘National Government’ ill-defined so as to subvert the limit on cabinet-size. Wickramaratne famously insisted that just because the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) supported the UNP, the term ‘National Government’ remains valid, even though the SLMC had just one MP after the 95 MPs of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) had left the yahapalana arrangement.

He was a member of the steering committee set up by the yahapalana government to change the constitution. There was a lot of noise, little result. Federalism was the unstated objective. They obviously wanted to create more comfortable operating conditions for separatists. Naturally, neither he nor anyone else said anything about the basics, namely the fact that history, archaeology, geography, demography and even economic common sense rebelled against the exercise. They were silent on the most glaring anomaly on the ground, that of random, unscientific, ahistorical lines demarcating the key unit that is being deliberated, namely the province.