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New constitution: Drafting committee to meet parties

08 Jan 2021

By Hiranyada Dewasiri   The nine-member expert committee appointed to draft the new constitution is to meet political parties to obtain their views, with the preliminary draft preparation set to conclude in April, The Morning learnt. “We were given a period of six months to submit the preliminary draft and three months have passed since. We have collected the opinions of the public and we will meet with political parties soon,” a member of the expert committee told The Morning on Wednesday (6). The preliminary draft will be handed over to the relevant authorities once prepared, the said member noted. The deadline for the invitation of public proposals concluded on 31 December 2020, and the expert committee member added that the committee had received a number of proposals from the public. The committee consists of Chairperson Romesh De Silva PC, retired Judge Justice A.W.A. Salam, Navin Marapana PC, Manohara De Silva PC, Sanjeeva Jayawardena PC, Samantha Ratwatte PC, Prof. G.H. Peiris, Prof. Wasantha Seneviratne, and Dr. A. Sarveswaran. The committee is to prepare a preliminary draft for a new constitution for Sri Lanka to replace the 1978 Constitution. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in Parliament on 22 October 2020 with a two-thirds majority. It has increased the powers of the Executive and restored powers that were stripped from it under the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. The United National Front (UNF)-led Government that came to power in 2015 was also in the process of drafting a new constitution for Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, The Morning also learnt that two persons whose names were nominated as appointees to the nine-member expert committee, who had received the approval of the Cabinet of Ministers on 2 September 2020 to draft a new constitution for Sri Lanka, have since been replaced by two others. Gamini Marapana PC and Prof. Naazima Kamardeen attached to the Department of Commercial Law of the Faculty of Law at the University of Colombo, whose names were on the cabinet release that listed the names of the members of the expert committee, are no longer a part of the committee. Justice Salam and Navin Marapana have been appointed to the committee in their place. When contacted by The Morning on Wednesday, Prof. Kamardeen noted that she was never a part of the committee. “I did not accept my appointment as I am not a constitutional lawyer,” she said. Navin Marapana told The Morning on the same day that Cabinet approval was amended and Gamini Marapana is no longer a part of the committee. “I have absolutely no idea when it happened, but Cabinet approval got amended,” he noted.


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