COLOMBO: Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe assured Provincial Chief Ministers who met him here on Friday, that the Development (Special Provisions) bill to be introduced in parliament in February next year, will not eat away the powers of the Provincial Councils given by the 13 th. Amendment of the constitution.
The Prime Minister said that the aim of the bill is only to involve the Provincial Councils in national level policy making on all development matters.
The bill is supported by Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) and opposed by the United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led President Maithripala Sirisena.
The opponents of the bill fear that it will be used by the UNP to dominate policy making through a “Super Minister” who is expected to be Prime Minister Wickremesinghe himself as he is already in-charge of economic policy in the coalition government.
When the bill was circulated among the Provincial Councils for their concurrence, the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) under the Tamil National Alliance (TNA); the North Central Provincial Council (NCPC); and the Uva Provincial Council voted against it .The NPC rejected it unanimously.
A member of the opposition in the NPC told Express that the idea behind the bill is to replicate the structure that prevailed under former President Mahinda Rajapaksa in which, his brother Basil Rajapaksa who was Economic Development Minister, functioned as a de-facto “Super Minister” taking all critical economic decisions, whether the matter pertained to the Central or the Provincial List under the 13 th.Amendment.
The pro-Rajapaksa faction in the UPFA and the pro-Sirisena faction of the SLFP are opposed to a further concentration of powers in the hands of the UNP and its leader Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. They have been at odds with almost all the economic decisions taken by him so far.