The President is Powerless to Remove the Prime Minister in Sri Lanka

Our comrade Dr Reeza Hameed explains that ‘The changes brought about by the Nineteenth Amendment are designed to free Parliament and the Prime Minister from subservience to the President. The President no longer has the power to remove the Prime Minister.’

Some commentators have persistently advanced the proposition that, notwithstanding the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka, the President’s power to remove the Prime Minister is intact. It is a view that relies on a literal reading of the Sinhala text of Article 48(1) in which the phrase “removal from office” appears. I have, in my previous intervention on this subject, analysed the provisions of the Constitution as amended by the Nineteenth Amendment and expressed the view that the President no longer has this power. That interpretation has been questioned on the basis that the words “removal from office” appear in the Sinhala text of Article 48(1); and because the Sinhala text should prevail in the event of an inconsistency, it must follow that the President may remove the Prime Minister. I disagree with this conclusion for the reasons I have given below. The tenure of Prime Minister’s office pre-Nineteenth Amendment is as follows.

The Constitution as enacted in 1978, (which I shall hereafter refer to as ‘the Principal Enactment’), in Article 47, provided for the tenure of the office of the Prime Minister. It stated that he “shall continue to hold office throughout the period during which the Cabinet of Minister continues to function under the provisions of the Constitution unless he (1) is removed by the President, (2) resigns his office, or (3) ceases to be a Member of Parliament.” The Prime Minister shall continue to remain in his office unless and until any one of the three events mentioned above occured, whereupon he would cease to hold office. This provision was repealed by the Nineteenth Amendment which was enacted in May 2015.

‘The Arab World in Turmoil’: A Talk by Ambassador Karamatullah Ghori

We have no problem with Iran. Besides, we share a long border and are culturally more akin to Iran than to Saudi Arabia.

The standoff in Yemen between the Saudis and Iranians shows that a high death toll and human suffering alone will stop neither side from trying to build up its influence in the region. In Syria, after a relentless war which has left countless innocent people dead, Iran’s influence is in the ascendency along with its old ally Russia. The fall of Ghouta confirms this point. It demonstrates the impotence of the West as a player in the Middle East. After Saddam’s fall in 2003, Iran quickly developed its importance in Iraq. Iran was also quick to protect its neighbour when ISIS took over large parts of Iraq in 2014. Interestingly, John Bolton, who has been made Trump’s national security advisor after general McMaster was cashiered, wants to destroy the Iranian regime and advocates its replacement by Maryam Rajavi’s Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation, whose members had been proscribed as terrorists in many western countries. Mohammed bin Salman, who has recently been on a charm offensive and has been rubbing shoulders with Theresa May and schmoozing with president Trump making billion dollar deals, is now on a mission to win over support in Iraq.

The Saudi crown prince, who is on a quest to remake the Middle East, also says that Riyadh also has strategic interests with Tel Aviv despite the ongoing slaughter of the Palestinians by the Israeli military machine. Anyhow, the Wahabi Saudi regime is extending a hand of friendship to disillusioned Shias in Iraq who do not wish to align their interests with Tehran. For example, Muqtada al-Sadr, the stern leader of the Saraya al-Salam met Mohammed bin Salman in Najaf last year. Najaf is a natural place for the Saudi-Iranian rivalry to pan out further, of course Tehran has much more experience than Riyadh on the ground in Najaf and Southern Iraq. In these interesting times Pakistan’s former ambassador Karamatullah Ghori delivered lecture on The Arab World on Turmoil on 31 March, 2018 at The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA).

Trump’s Tweets: The Denial Factor

Despite a furious response from the Pakistani media, the foreign office and ISPR have responded sensibly to the situation.

Trump is a total racist who thinks that black people from “shithole countries” such as poor Haiti are unworthy of the superior status he bestows upon white people from Norway. But of course he went on to quickly deny he said that at all. Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury confirms that Trump is an infantile person and his administration knows that he is an 11 year old. Psychoanalytic studies suggest that human beings always need an external object to put all the blames on him for their own misdeeds. We create an external enemy of ‘flesh and blood’ that can be fought and can be avenged. In other words, we imagine that our failures are not because of our own misdeeds but because of some other external forces. Such use of imagination helps us to come out of our inner sorrow by blaming some external enemy who is falsely thought to be the reason for our own failures. After all, states are run by human beings not stones. Indeed, states are often in ‘denial’ about accepting reality and the US is no different in that resect.  

A recent tweet by Donald Trump blamed Pakistan and argued that ‘The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!’ Mounting tensions have led Pakistan to react by halting intelligence sharing with the US after losing American military aid. Instead, Islamabad will turn to its ‘time tested friend’ and ‘reliable ally’ Beijing. In October 2017, the same Trump was found praising Pakistan for its cooperation in rescuing a North-American family from the Taliban. However, now, Trump has accused Pakistan of giving safe haven to the terrorists that Americans hunt in Afghanistan.

Reportage on PIIA’s Peace in South Asia Conference 2017

“The current policies of the United States of America for South Asia can disrupt peace in the region” – President Mamnoon Hussain at the 70^th Anniversary Conference of the PIIA.

Donald J Trump’s election to the White House demonstrates the extremely vulgar nature of American society. And it is difficult to disagree with the assessment that the American president really is a “deranged dotard”. Heaven knows, despite the tyrannical nature of his own country, North Korea’s insane “little rocket man” might even be making a valid point when he calls Trump’s sanity into question. Trump’s totally crazy brinkmanship with Pyongyang shows that he is willing to put the safety of billions of people at risk by his recklessness. But perhaps it is all just a charade to deliberately divert attention far away from emerging domestic problems connected to Robert Mueller’s investigation, the Sword of Damocles hanging over Trump and his cronies’ heads, about the Trump campaign’s collusion with the Kremlin to rig the election. Overall Trump is a sexist and a racist. He never tells the truth and serially dismisses all accusations of sexual misconduct/offending against him. Against American and British interests, he retweets from Britain First – a racist and neo-Nazi organisation.

His hatred of Muslims is so severe that he has even declared Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital. Clearly, he is deliberately destabilising the Middle East. Trump is a danger to the world and it is hard to disagree with the soft speaking figure of president Mamnoon Hussain that the present American administration is a threat to peace in South Asia (and indeed the rest of the world). The reckless and inflammatory rhetoric manifested by Trump can only bolster Hindus’ hatred for Muslims in India where killing Muslims for “love jihad” (or having a Hindu girlfriend or boyfriend) is seen as a force for good. In such testing times, The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) organised a regional conference which was held last month in Karachi. Esteemed speakers from all walks of life addressed the lively audience.

Programme for Conference on Peace in South Asia: 15-16 November 2017

This year, The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, which is the oldest think tank in Pakistan, is celebrating 70 years of its founding. It was established as an independent, non-political, not for profit association in 1947, devoted to study and research in international relations, economics and jurisprudence. To mark its seventieth anniversary, PIIA is holding a regional conference on Peace in South Asia: Opportunities and Challenges on 15 and 16 November 2017. Scholars from leading think tanks, academia and diplomats in the region are being invited to participate in this conference. South Asia, comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan is the most densely populated region of the world. Its population of 1.8 billion comprises one-fourth of the global population and almost 40 per cent of the population of Asia. The President of Pakistan, Mr Mamnoon Hussain will inaugurate the Conference. The programme is available here. The proceedings can be live streamed here.

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Balochistan: The Unresolved Conflict

The government needs to work together with the mainstream Baloch political parties to bring reforms and change in Balochistan.

On 18 September 2017, Geneva’s streets were branded with ‘Free Baluchistan’ posters by members of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA); a separatist group proscribed by both the United Kingdom and Pakistan as a terrorist organisation. Only recently, Pakistan strongly protested against Switzerland allowing its territory to be used by a terrorist organisation to carry out activities that infringed upon its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The ambassador of Switzerland, Thomas Kolly, was asked to leave Pakistan, by the Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani. India was also deemed responsible for funding these displays in Geneva. While there has been no concrete evidence suggesting whether India has funded such activities, it has extended its support to these separatist groups on previous occasions. India’s National Security Advisors, AK Doval, threatened Pakistan, stating that the troublesome neighbour could lose Balochistan if 2008 was repeated.

Following Doval’s threats on Balochistan, Pakistan arrested India’s senior intelligence operative, Commander Kulbhushan Jhadav, from Balochistan on March 3, 2016, who confessed to funding, training and planning terrorist attacks in the province. The event in Geneva orchestrated Pakistan’s biggest fear – international meddling in its affairs with regards to Balochistan. Yet, neither Switzerland nor India are responsible for the rise of the separatists in Balochistan; rather, the fault lines can be traced to the uneven state building in Pakistan. While greater resources and efforts have been devoted to the federal, Balochistan remains neglected in political, economic, and social terms. A disenfranchised Balochistan lays as a breeding ground for insurgency.

Ayesha Ahmed: All Weather Friendship: A Closer Examination

Though the interests of the two countries are increasingly intertwined due to CPEC, the question still remains as to what Pakistan should be able to expect from its “iron brother” on an international diplomatic stage.

The relationship between China and Pakistan is almost as old as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) itself and significantly Pakistan was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with PRC in 1950. Whilst relations between the neighbouring countries have remained largely positive over the years, the creation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in 2013 means the alliance between the two countries has entered a golden age. Indeed, China’s current investments in CPEC stand at around $62 billion and the project is expected to reinvigorate Pakistan’s economy. No wonder then that just two months after the establishment of CPEC former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif famously described the alliance in glowing terms as “sweeter than honey” and “higher than the Himalayas”. However, just last month a statement from the BRICS summit that China hosted in Xiamen threatened to undermine this warm rhetoric and the “all weather friendship” between the two countries.

On September 4th, a BRICS declaration against terror groups included, among others, Lashkar e Taiba, Jaish e Mohammed and the Haqqani Network. All three groups are based in Pakistan. This declaration came just three days after Chinese Foreign Minister spokesperson Hua Chunying told a press briefing that Pakistan’s counter-terrorism effort was not an “appropriate topic” for the BRICS summit. Granted, the Xiamen declaration neither explicitly named Pakistan nor made any overt comments about Pakistan’s ability to deal with terrorism, yet the very mention of these three groups opened Pakistan to speculation about its effectiveness in dealing with terrorism in its own backyard. Such a declaration, ostensibly endorsed by one of Pakistan’s closest allies at a high profile international summit, undoubtedly dealt a heavy blow to Islamabad.