President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have both announced that they will resign, and so have a group of ministers.
But two days after these announcements, no one has actually resigned – and Sri Lanka’s divided political fraternity is struggling to come together for a systematic transition to a functioning national unity government. It was earlier announced that the President would resign on 13 July.
What does the Sri Lankan constitution say about succession?
Under Article 40 of the Constitution of Sri Lanka, if the office of the President becomes vacant before the expiration of the five-year term, the Parliament must elect one of its members to be the President. The successor will hold office for the remainder of the vacant President’s term.
This election is to be held within one month from the date of occurrence of the vacancy. The election is by secret ballot, and the candidate must secure an absolute majority.
Between the vacancy arising and the new president taking office, the prime minister will act as acting president, and appoint a minister from his cabinet to act as prime minister. If the office of the Prime Minister is vacant, the Speaker will act as the Acting President.
So what is the point of this provision in the current situation?
This means that if Wickremesinghe is still prime minister – and if – President Rajapaksa resigns, he can serve as president, at least until parliament elects a new president. It could also give him an edge in the subsequent election to parliament for a new president.
This may partly explain the limbo in Colombo, with the prime minister and several ministers playing the waiting game as the president no longer has the support of those who elected him less than three years ago, Keep the country on tenterhooks. ,
It also explains the insistence at an all-party conference on Saturday that both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa should resign before a national interim government can be formed.
And where does the speaker come in in all this?
The opposition party with the most number of MPs, Sajith Premadasa’s Samagi Jana Balvegaya (SJB), is deadlocked against Wickremesinghe’s continuance in any office. Premadasa pulled out of Wickremesinghe’s UNP to form the SJB ahead of the 2020 parliamentary election, ensuring that Sri Lanka’s “oldest party” did not get a seat.
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Under the chronology envisaged by the all-party convention, after the two main resignations (the President and the Prime Minister), Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abhayawardene would convene parliament to elect a new President, and act as President in the interim.
But if Wickremesinghe resigns before Rajapaksa’s resignation, Rajapaksa’s loyalist Abhayawardene steps down as acting president. It could also sabotage efforts to form an all-party government.
Where do matters really stand then?
On Monday (July 11) competing statements from the Prime Minister’s Office, President and Leader of the Opposition Premadasa shed light on the intense jockeying between the different camps. Early Monday, the Prime Minister’s Office made a statement that said the President had informed the Prime Minister that “he will resign as previously announced”.
Within hours, the President’s Secretariat issued a statement saying that all messages issued by President Rajapaksa “will be issued by the President after the President has informed him. shall be treated as”.
Later in the afternoon, Premadasa also issued a statement declaring that he was ready to “lead the program of stabilizing the country and building the country’s economy”.
In a statement reported by the NewsFirst Lanka website, Premadasa said that “the President, the Prime Minister and the SLPP government had lost the mandate of the people” and that “there was no alternative solution” other than the appointment of a new President-led government as the Prime Minister. “. He also warned that if anyone “opposes this or takes recourse to subversive acts from Parliament, it will be treated as an act of sedition”.