|
Sri Lanka Historical Perspective, 1802-1978
After the Dutch ceded the island's maritime provinces to the
British in 1802, these areas became Britain's first crown colony.
The conquest and subjugation of the inland Kingdom of Kandy in
1815-18 brought the entire island under British control. Crown
colony status meant that the island's affairs were administered
by the Colonial Office in London, rather than by the East India
Company that governed India until 1857. Even after the Indian
Empire--ruled by a viceroy appointed by the British monarch--was
established following the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Ceylon (as Sri
Lanka was then called) was not included within its authority. The
principal features of government and administration during the
first century of British rule were a strong executive--the
colonial governor--and a council of official and unofficial
members who first served in a solely advisory capacity but were
gradually granted legislative powers. An institution of central
importance was the Ceylon Civil Service. In the early years, it
was staffed primarily by British and other European personnel but
then, increasingly and almost exclusively, by Sri Lankans.
A major turning point in the island's political development
was implementation in 1931 of comprehensive reforms recommended
by a royal commission headed by the Earl of Donoughmore. The most
salient feature of the so-called Donoughmore Constitution, which
attempted to reconcile British colonial control of the executive
with Sri Lankan aspirations for self-government, was adoption of
universal adult suffrage. This was, at that time, a bold
experiment in representative government. Before 1931, only 4
percent of the male population, defined by property and
educational qualifications, could vote. When elections to the
legislature were held in 1932, the colony became the first polity
in Asia to recognize women's suffrage. (Japan had adult male
suffrage in 1925, but universal adult suffrage came only after
World War II. The Philippines, an United States colony, achieved
it in 1938.)
Toward the close of World War II, a second royal commission,
headed by Lord Soulbury, was sent to Sri Lanka in order to
consult with local leaders on the drafting of a new constitution.
In its general contours, the Soulbury Constitution, approved in
1946, became the basic document of Ceylon's government when the
country achieved independence on February 4, 1948. It established
a parliamentary system modelled on that of Britain and quite
similar to the constitution adopted by India in 1949. Like
Britain, unlike India with its federal arrangement of states,
independent Ceylon was, and in the later 1980s remained, a
unitary state. The constitution established a parliament headed
by the British monarch (represented by the governor general) and
two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The
latter, like the House of Commons in Britain, had the
preponderant role in legislation. The majority party or party
coalition in the popularly elected House of Representatives
designated the prime minister. Executive power, formally vested
in the monarch (in the person of his or her representative, the
governor general), was in actuality exercised by the prime
minister and his or her cabinet.
The second constitution, adopted in 1972, represented an
attempt on the part of the SLFP-led United Front coalition, which
had been elected in May 1970, to create new political
institutions that allegedly reflected indigenous values more
perfectly than the 1946 constitution. It abolished the Senate and
established a unicameral National State Assembly. The assembly
was defined as the embodiment of the power of the state, and
provisions in the constitution denied the judiciary the authority
to challenge its enactments. In addition, the constitution
changed the formal name of the country from Dominion of Ceylon to
Republic of Sri Lanka. In a controversial measure, the United
Front-dominated assembly gave itself two additional years in
power beyond its constitutionally defined five-year term
(elections were originally scheduled for 1975). Judicial curbs on
the executive were also greatly restricted. Through the exercise
of a wide range of emergency and special powers, the government
of Sirimavo Bandaranaike exercised strict control over the
political system.
Aside from the issue of authoritarianism, two extremely
controversial aspects of the 1972 constitution were the
abandonment of the idea of a secular state, which had been
incorporated into the 1946 constitution, and designation of
Sinhala as the sole national language. Although the constitution
did not make Sri Lanka a Buddhist state, it declared that "the
Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place
and accordingly it shall be the duty of the state to protect and
foster Buddhism while assuring to all religions the rights
secured by Section 18 (i)(d) [religious freedom]." Tamils, a
predominately Hindu minority, resented the special status given
to Buddhism and the nonrecognition of a role for their language
in national life.
In the July 1977 general election, the UNP was swept into
power. The new ruling party, led by Jayewardene, won 140 out of
168 seats in the assembly and thus was in a position to initiate
substantial revisions of the 1972 constitution. This process it
proceeded to undertake by passing the Second Amendment, which
established the office of executive president in October 1977.
Jayewardene assumed the presidency on February 4, 1978. In
November 1977, the UNP and the major opposition parties, with the
conspicuous absence of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF),
convened a select committee to draft further revisions. After
conducting a survey on the opinions of various Sri Lankan
citizens, it concluded that changes embodied in the Second
Amendment were not sufficient to promote substantial reform and
recommended that a new constitution be drafted. The new document
was adopted by the National State Assembly in mid-August 1978,
and went into effect on September 7, 1978. Under its provisions,
the legislature chosen in the July 1977 general election was
designated the country's new Parliament.
Data as of October 1988
|
