The 17th amendment was a piece of legislature that was passed unanimously in Parliament to ensure the depoliticisation of appointments to key state institutions, including the police, judiciary and the public service, a fact that highlighted the common necessity felt by all parties, irrespective of their divergent political views. In short, this was a wish for good governance.

Yet, for the last four years our legislature has failed to appoint the Constitutional Council, the body that is vested with power to appoint Independent Commissions. When there are more reasons than one for a commission or an omission of an act, it is always easy to find a scapegoat as a way of shielding the real issue in question. It is true that minority parties wasted much of time on account of their inability to reach an agreement on their nominee to the CC. However, JVP, JHU and the TNA setting aside their petty differences finally reached a consensus in naming C.S. Mayadunne, former Auditor General as their nominee. So everybody was happy that at last they had managed to resolve the problem and hoped CC would be appointed within a couple of weeks, if not in a few days. But that was not to be.

In the beginning, the government said that Mayadunne could not be appointed as he was already holding a consultancy post under the Secretary General of Parliament, an argument that was to be thrown off balance with Mayadunne volunteering to resign from that post provided his appointment to the CC is confirmed. The next pretext the government came up with was that the Parliamentary Select Committee examining the 17th amendment almost for the last two years should complete its deliberations before the President’s candidate could be nominated, a lame excuse since an operational CC is in no way an obstacle to incorporate any proposals that may be made by the Select Committee in the future to improve the present amendment. On the other hand, 17th amendment is already a part of our Constitution and a law of the land every citizen including the President is bound to abide by.

No, the real reason behind the President’s reluctance to appoint his member to make the CC operational is crystal clear. A country to be ruled like a feudal estate has to do away with all sorts of mechanisms that are in place to maintain checks and balances. A President willing to appoint his cohorts to important positions in the administration would not allow democratic safeguards like the CC to be in his way.

Inspector General of Police as well as Director General of Parliament is to retire in the near future. There will be vacancies on the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. In the absence of CC, the President could fill these posts as he did earlier with the Human Rights Commission leaving justifiable cause for the international community to downgrade our national body.

Having venerated principles written into statutes and estqblishing institutional network of high caliber do not necessarily guarantee good governance. There should be a democratic political culture and leaders who cherish democratic ideals if institutions are not to be limited to mere name boards.