A Return to Constitutional Authoritarianism: The 20th Amendment
One of the first acts of the new Government was to pass the 20th Amendment (20A) to the Constitution in October 2020, which took Sri Lanka once more into the fold of constitutional authoritarianism.
It rolls back many of the gains of the 19A and returned the country to hyper-Presidentialism with power concentrated in a strong elected President.[1535] A few of the changes introduced in 2015 remain. The term limits of both the President and Parliament remain at five years, the right to information remains a part of the Bill of Rights, and the President's official acts are still subject to scrutiny under the SC's fundamental rights jurisdiction.However, many of the powers the President previously exercised before the 19A, have been restored. 'lhe President may remove the Prime Minister at will, hold any cabinet portfolio and has the discretion to assign other ministerial portfolios among members of the Cabinet. The limitations on the size of the Cabinet have also been removed. 'lhe President may dissolve a democratically elected legislature after half its term, two and a half years, without assigning any reason.
The Constitutional Council which acted as a check on the President's unbridled power to make appointments to the independent commissions and the higher courts, has been abolished and replaced by an ineffective Parliamentary Council, consisting of the Speaker of the House and four other members of Parliament. As a result, appointments to the higher judiciary (the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court) and to the independent commissions may be made by the President with no checks. A last-minute change saw the size of the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court increased. This resulted in the President appointing half the members of the two most important courts almost immediately.
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