The 17th Amendment to the Constitution is passed, to make provisions for the Constitutional Council and Independent Commissions.
Extract from the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution on the appointment of the Constitutional Council
Constitution of the Constitutional Council.
41A. There shall be a Constitutional Council (in this Chapter referred to as the “Council”) which shall consist of the following members:
(a) the Prime Minister;
(b) the Speaker;
(c) the Leader of the Opposition In Parliament;
(d) one person appointed by the President;
(e) five persons appointed by the President, on the nomination of both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition;
Full text of the 17th Amendment
Related events
5 March 2005
December 2005
January 2006
3 April 2006
18 May 2006
Sunil Bastian said,
I am not that enthusiastic about talk of resurrecting the Constitutional Council because it amounts to tinkering with the presidential system, instead of questioning it fundamentally. When such powerful institutions are created in societies like ours where there are pre-capitalist relations as well as mentalities, people tend to look to this office as a saviour of everything, and appealing to the president becomes the answer to everything.
We need a much more radical discussion about institutions. We need to distinguish between institutions and politics. Democratic institutions per se don’t create democratic politics. I’m much less hopeful than some of my friends who are lawyers about institutional designs as solutions to Sri Lanka’s problems. We are very good at establishing commissions, passing laws. What has happened to our civil society is that instead of looking at society and developing a social base for reforms and change, we spend a lot of time tinkering with these institutions at the elite level.