Sri Lankan president insists on retaining emergency powers
By
Vijith Samarasinghe
14 February 2017
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has blocked a move to require a two-thirds parliamentary vote, rather than the current simple majority, to approve a presidential declaration of emergency. He ordered the removal of a clause to that effect in the proposed National Action Plan for Protection and Promotion of Human Rights (NHRAP).
The president’s insistence on having an unrestrained prerogative to impose police-state provisions underscores the anti-democratic nature of the government and its readiness to use draconian measures against political opponents, workers and the poor.
The new NHRAP clause was proposed by a ministerial committee, for submission to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which is scheduled to discuss the Sri Lankan human rights situation next month.
A previous NHRAP document, submitted to the UNHRC by former president Mahinda Rajapakse’s government, expired at the end of 2016. Rajapakse’s administration presented that document to UNHRC in 2011 in response to a resolution sponsored by the US that called for an investigation of war crimes committed during the final military offensive against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.
Washington used this resolution, not to support the democratic rights of the Sri Lankan population, but to pressure Rajapakse to distance himself from China, which the US regards as a strategic rival. When pressure failed, the US helped orchestrate the ouster of Rajapakse via the 2015 presidential election, which installed Sirisena as president.
Sirisena ordered the blocking of the NHRAP clause in a cabinet meeting late last month. Mahinda Samarasinghe, a cabinet minister from Sirisena’s Sri…