Professor Sunanda Madduma Bandara – again makes ass of himself today.

Sunanda Madduma Bandara – Director General (Development and Communication) in the Ministry of Economic Development. He,  therefore is a mouthpiece for Basil Rajapakse, his Minister as well of course for the Government. In today’s (Nov23rd) Lankadeepa Sinhala Newspaper (the paper with the highest daily circulation in Sri Lanka) Sunanda Madduma Bandara writes without disclosing his affiliation to the Government about the possibility of the people’s ownership, in this case of decisions via Parliament (in other words ‘parliament is supreme’) being belittled by the Judiciary taking an approach, and interpretation of the Constitution that goes against the ‘People’s Representatives’ and therefore the people’s choice.

He goes onto make an ASTONISHING STATEMENT about term limits which must be challenged lest we accept asinine statements from a Professor no less, and therefore casts doubts on his whole perspective and statement.

He says and I translate, that “in elections the loser has unlimited chances at contesting, so if a person is elected by popular choice, why should he also not have unlimited chances of contesting using the same logic, instead of only being allowed to contest for two terms”, as provided in the original Sri Lanka constitution, which was amended by the 18^th Amendment to remove term limits? Instead of being subjected to term limits. “It was wrong in a democracy to impose term limits and therefore that was why this was removed, to make it right again!” What logic if left unchallenged?

Term limits all across the world are imposed not to all democratic elections in obtaining a people’s mandate, but most especially for Presidential elections. After all the US has a two term maximum. In Russia, it is a one term after which you can re contest after an absence of a term to ensure that continuity is prevented. Hence Putin was President, then Prime Minister and then re-elected President after the one term break, with Medvedev who was the President, and is now PM who can contest the Presidency again.

He clearly does not understand the necessity in a democracy to prevent undue advantage to the holder in office, especially with the power of office that goes with an executive presidency, to have limits to curtail prolonging one person rule. If he does, he is clearly compensated lavishly to make this claim as a seeming scholar!! So readers please not feel betrayed by what you read. Just read between the lines, and know the background of the writer!

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST  THE SUPREMACY OF THE LEGISLATURE OVER THAT OF THE JUDICIARY AND EXECUTIVE WILL GO ON AND THIS BLOG WILL COVER THE CURRENT DEBATE