UNP to recommence discussions on 20A

The United National Party (UNP) is to recommence discussions on the proposed 20th Amendment to the constitution on Monday which looks to abolish the executive presidency. 

Sri Lanka's Speaker informed parliament last year that the proposed 20th Amendment would need a two third majority in parliament before being put before the public via a referendum in order to be implemented following a Supreme Court ruling. 

Discussions on the amendment have been stalled for weeks follow fierce opposition from a variety of groups for differing reasons. 

Sri Lanka's senior Buddhist clergy, the Maha Sangha, in May urged the president and prime minister not to push through with the proposed 20th amendment to the constitution which would abolish the executive presidency, arguing it was a move to divide the country. 

The Tamil National Alliance said it would only support it, if a resolution to the ethnic conflict is also proposed.

TNA spokesperson MA Sumanthiran said according to The Island: "We support the abolishing of the executive presidency. This system was introduced in 1978 and ever since it has lead to a lot of problems. In 2015, President Sirisena promised to scrap the post. Just like this the ethnic problem has created issues in Sri Lanka. A lot of people have died because of this. So equal attention should be paid to solving this as well."

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.