Introduction

Sri Lanka's current Constitution promulgated in 1978 was meant to be a trans­formative one. It was adopted to create an empowering framework to spur economic growth in the country.

Despite this ambitious goal, the country has been challenged by some of its worst political violence and serious governance crises since the Constitution came into effect. There have been some economic gains and the country has transited from low-income status to middle-income status, and even for a brief period to upper middle-income status. However, at the time of writing, the country is having to cope with its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948, partly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and partly caused by constitutional authoritarianism and poor governance.

The transformation sought by the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka was modest and not as ambitious as the constitutions of India and South Africa. In India constitutional architects envisaged that the Constitution would contribute to reducing poverty, eliminating the caste system, and responding to socio-economic inequality. Similarly in South Africa, drafters of the 1996 Constitution envisaged a dismantling of the structures of apartheid and a transformation of the lives of the majority of the population.² To constitutional architects in Sri Lanka in 1978

¹My thanks to the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore for institutional support.

² See the discussion and the sources cited in Michaela Hailbronner, ‘Transformative Constitutionalism: Not Only in the Global South' (2017) 65 American Journal of Comparative Law 527-65. however, the goals were less ambitious. The 1978 Constitution sought to create a stable executive with large powers, immune from the checks and balances provided in other constitutional democracies, that could drive economic growth. Opponents of the 1978 Constitution, however, saw it as a first step to entrenching authoritarianism.

We start by discussing some constitutional background and context before moving on to a discussion of the 1978 Constitution. We examine its key elements and reflect on the paradox of combining untrammeled executive power with a Bill of Rights. We also discuss the transformation of the Constitution by way of a key constitutional amendment in 2015 and consider two failed attempts at constitution­making which, had they gone through, could have resulted in a democratisation of the state. In our conclusion we argue that the current Constitution has failed to meet its objective of putting in place a constitutional design for securing economic growth. Instead, the country has witnessed some of it worst political violence and economic instability during this period.

Three issues have dominated constitutional politics in Sri Lanka: the place of Buddhism; power-sharing and devolution of power; and presidentialism. Other issues such as the electoral system, an adequate bill of rights, and judicial review of legislation, have also figured in constitutional debates. Yet, it is these three issues that have dominated debates on constitutional reform. While the three issues have their own dynamics and their own historical trajectory, they ultimately reflect a tension between two competing visions of the nature of the Sri Lankan state. Is Sri Lanka a Sinhala-Buddhist entity where the minorities live at the behest of the majority, or is it a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual entity with equal rights for all its citi­zens? This tension runs through all the debates on constitutional reform since 1931.^[1476]

II.