Few political promises carried as much symbolic and democratic weight as the National People’s Power pledge to abolish the long-disputed Executive Presidency. When Anura Kumara Dissanayake went before the electorate in 2024, the commitment was unambiguous. The Executive Presidency would be dismantled, its sweeping powers curtailed, and a parliamentary system restored as the centre of democratic governance. It was not a peripheral promise. It was the moral core of the NPP’s claim to represent a decisive break from the past.
More than a year into Government, however, the contrast between promise and progress is difficult to ignore.
To be clear, constitutional reform has not been abandoned. The Government has repeatedly stated its intention to move towards a new Constitution. The Prime Minister has spoken of concept papers, background studies and internal consultations aimed at drafting a constitutional framework that would abolish executive powers and re-establish parliamentary supremacy. These statements suggest a Government still committed, at least in principle, to its foundational pledge.
Yet commitment in principle is not the same as action in law. As of early 2026, no constitutional amendment bill has been tabled in Parliament to abolish the Executive Presidency. No draft Constitution has been released to the public. No parliamentary debate has been initiated. No timeline has been announced for a referendum, which is an unavoidable requirement for any meaningful constitutional change of this scale. In practical terms, the existing constitutional order remains intact, and the President continues to exercise the full range of executive powers granted by the current Constitution.
This gap between rhetoric and legislative movement has drawn growing scrutiny from civil society, constitutional lawyers and political analysts. Many point out that the NPP, unlike previous Governments, commands a parliamentary majority and enjoys a popular mandate rooted in reformist expectations. The absence of visible progress therefore raises questions not about feasibility, but about political will and prioritisation. Others warn that delay itself becomes a political obstacle. The longer constitutional reform is postponed, the harder it becomes to build consensus, manage resistance and see the process through before the next electoral cycle reshapes political incentives.
What makes this moment particularly sensitive is the historical record of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the ideological backbone of the NPP. From the early 1990s onwards, the JVP was among the most consistent and vocal critics of the Executive Presidency. After re-entering democratic politics, it repeatedly argued the system entrenched authoritarianism, hollowed out Parliament and weakened judicial independence by concentrating power in a single individual.
This position was not confined to speeches or manifestos. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the JVP extended political support to several presidential candidates outside its own ranks on the explicit understanding they would work towards abolishing the Executive Presidency. These alliances were often uneasy and conditional, but the abolition of the Executive Presidency was presented as a shared minimum programme, one that transcended party lines in the name of democratic reform.
In Parliament, in policy documents and in public campaigns, the JVP consistently maintained this position. Whether in opposition, offering conditional support to minority governments, or exercising limited parliamentary influence, its critique of the Executive Presidency did not waver. That consistency became a source of moral authority. It allowed the party to argue that it opposed not merely the misuse of power, but the structure that enabled it.
It is precisely this history that now frames the judgment of the NPP Government. The criticism it faces is not abstract or opportunistic. It is rooted in the party’s own political legacy. Having spent three decades condemning the Executive Presidency as fundamentally incompatible with democracy, the NPP is now expected to act with urgency, clarity and transparency in dismantling it.
None of this requires theatrical confrontation or rushed law making. Constitutional reform is complex and demands careful drafting. But seriousness of intent must be matched by visible steps. A published draft, a parliamentary motion, a clear timeline and an honest public conversation would signal that the process has moved from internal preparation to democratic engagement.
The question confronting the NPP is not whether constitutional reform is desirable. On that, its own history leaves little room for ambiguity. The question is whether the Government is willing to bear the political costs of delivering on a promise that defined its rise. For a movement built on long memory and moral argument, delay risks becoming its most dramatic contradiction.