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Most of the proposals in the 18th Amendment, to be presented to Parliament today, came from the Opposition, though the UNP is staging protests against it, President Mahinda Rajapaksa says.

Addressing a group of media heads and newspaper editors at Temple Trees yesterday, President Rajapaksa said resistance to the 18th Amendment emanated from chronic prejudices that some people harboured against him. "They oppose the amendment because they fear I will secure a third tem but they would not have resisted so fiercely, if someone with an elitist background had sought to do so," he said. "Their problem is that I come from Medamulana and not from Colombo 07."

The President said he had been thinking of abolishing the executive presidency but all his MPs had wanted to retain that institution. "I thought they, being parliamentarians, would want the head of State to sit among them in the House, but to my surprise they wanted the executive presidency to stay," he said. The UPFA MPs had made that decision at a workshop in Beruwala a few weeks back, he said. "I got late for that meeting purposely so that they could discuss freely and arrive at a decision and by the time I went there they said with one voice that they did not want the executive presidency abolished."

Asked why the government was in a mighty hurry to rush the 18-A through Parliament as an urgent bill without giving the public and opinion leaders enough time to discuss it, the President said there had been sufficient time for that purpose and the government wanted to have it passed urgently so as to concentrate on the budget to be presented in Parliament in November. He said the 17th Amendment too had been passed in a similar manner and no one had asked whether the people had been given enough time to discuss it.

President Rajapaksa was flanked by Ministers Maithripala Sirisena, Dulles Alahapperuma, Nimal Siripala de Silva, Keheliya Rambukwella, Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene, Basil Rajapaksa and Prof. G. L. Peiris as well as Secretary to President Lalith Weeratunga.

Minister de Silva claimed that the constitutional proposals had been debated long enough and that process had begun about three months back. He chose to call the 18-A a simple amendment.

Asked how many times he intended to contest presidential elections, a smiling President Rajapaksa quipped, "Any number of times the people want me to!" He said he believed that the removal of the two-term limit would make an incumbent president serving his or her second term act with responsibility as he or she had to be mindful of facing another election. He said the removal of Article 31(2) would only provide an incumbent president with an opportunity to contest another presidential election and whether he or she would be re-elected depended on the wish of electors. If a president did not carry out his or her duties to their satisfaction, the people would reject him, he said.

When it was pointed out by an editor that the abolition of the Constitutional Council would help an incumbent president to use untrammeled powers to abuse his position as the commander-in-chief, among other things, to go on winning elections indefinitely, President Rajapaksa said such powers were not something new and they had been there even under the 1972 Constitution and the 1978 Constitution. He said no president in his or her proper senses would resort to such tactics and incur the opprobrium of the voting public.

Minister Basil Rajapaksa said the 18-A, contrary to claims of the critics of the government, in fact, sought to strengthen Parliament through the creation of the Parliamentary Council consisting of parliamentarians. He said it would remove obstacles to the restoration of the supremacy of parliament.

Minister Yapa said he could not understand why there was opposition to the removal of the term limit in a country where Prime Minister J. R. Jayewardene had appointed himself President without an election in 1978. He said the need for abolishing the 17th Amendment had been stressed first by Minister of Public Administration of the UNF government (2001-2004) Vajira Abeywardene, who had complained to the Cabinet some aged commissioners were sitting on hundreds of files delaying the work of his ministry. Only Karu Jayasuriya had defended the 17th Amendment, he said.

When an editor argued that the objective of the 18-A was to strengthen the executive president’s hand by removing checks and balances imposed by the 17-A, President Rajapaksa said that the executive presidency was not so powerful as it was made out to be. "I am dependent on Parliament for financial allocations," he said. He recalled the situation during the period from 2001 to 2004 when the then President did not have a majority in Parliament under the UNF government.

An editor: But the president can dissolve Parliament, can’t he?

President: Yes, but he or she has to wait for one year to do so and that provision has nothing do with the 18th Amendment. It has been there since 1978.

In reply to a question why the government did not carry out its promise to abolish the executive presidency, Minister Basil Rajapaksa said the last presidential election should be considered a referendum on that matter. The main Opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka had asked for a popular mandate for doing away with the executive presidency and implementing the 17 Amendment but the people had defeated him by 1.8 million votes thereby rejecting his offer. He said President Rajapaksa had not undertaken to do away with the executive presidency as an election pledge in 2010.

When it was pointed out neither President Rajapaksa nor the UPFA had sought a mandate for the 18-A at the presidential and parliamentary polls held early this year, Minister de Silva said it was practically impossible for a government to seek mandates for all the laws it passed or to present only the bills for which mandates had been obtained. He said the people had not given any mandate for the 17th Amendment as well.

Minister Sirisena said those who were talking of popular mandates and the need for time to discuss constitutional amendments had kept the people and MPs in the dark about the Ceasefire Agreement signed in 2002.

President Rajapaksa said the independence of the Constitutional Council was only a myth. "I myself was a member of it and some members used to consult their political leaders over the telephone before making decisions; so how can you say the Constitutional Council members were independent?"