Birth of a bad law

2026/09/26

The outcome of yesterday’s parliamentary vote on the 22nd Amendment (22A) to the Constitution came as no surprise. The ayes had it with a two-thirds majority. Now, the Speaker will sign the 22A bill into law posthaste, increasing the mandatory retirement ages of the judges of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. However, even a special majority cannot make a bad law good.

It was speculated in some quarters that some NPP MPs would break ranks and vote against 22A. There was no such rift in the ruling party yesterday. Not that every NPP MP is well-disposed towards the controversial amendment, but it is seldom that a government MP votes against a crucial bill. There have been crossovers in previous Parliaments but they were mostly due to internal clashes and competing ambitions rather than policy issues.

Only the naïve expected 22A to be placed before the people at a referendum. The government is wary of facing elections and doing everything in its power to delay the Provincial Council elections further. It would not have proceeded with 22A if it had had the slightest doubt that there would be a referendum. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has demonstrated a remarkable ability to make predictions about judicial decisions, much to the resentment of the Opposition. After all, he comes from the same district as Gnanakka, the go-to seeress for the leaders of the SLPP government––Anuradhapura.

Having failed to pressure the JVP-NPP government into deep-sixing 22A, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, Opposition political parties and some civil society outfits resorted to what may be described as moral suasion. They urged the MPs to vote according to their conscience. Politicians are known to act out of expediency, which takes precedence over everything else in politics. A wag says exhorting politicians to act according to their conscience in Parliament is like expecting chastity to be practised in a house of ill-fame.

The government is crowing about the passage of 22A, but trouble is far from over for it. 22A has become a rallying point for the Opposition. The SLPP put on a good show of strength a few weeks ago in Anuradhapura, and the SJB held a successful protest on Thursday near Parliament.

The Opposition is bound to expand its protests to cover other issues as well and tap public resentment to fuel its anti-government campaign. The government will find itself in a dilemma. Adopting coercive methods to suppress dissent are counterproductive, and leniency encourages the Opposition to intensify its protests.

The government has antagonised the legal fraternity that played a pivotal role in engineering the 2024 regime change. Doctors, university teachers and other professionals who threw their weight behind the JVP/NPP, facilitating its rise to power, are also on the warpath. Farmers are in a paddy, unable to sell their produce at reasonable prices, so much so that both the Minister of Agriculture and his deputy had to skip President Dissanayake’s inaugural farmers’ rally in Polonnaruwa a few weeks ago. It is unlikely that what the government has sought to achieve through 22A politically will help it consolidate its power if it fails to deliver and grant some tangible economic relief to the public.

Meanwhile, 22A has brought about a situation where both the government and the judiciary will be under intense international scrutiny. Zimbabwe has been down that road before. The JVP/NPP did not ask for a mandate to emulate Zimbabwe, did it?

சுவாமி சங்கரானந்தா

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