Two major lies about the 1978 Constitution

2022-09-11

Two great lies have been propagated about the 1978 Constitution. When a lie is repeated many times by many persons, such often begins to be treated as conventional truth.

The first of these lies is that the 1978 Constitution was based on the models of the French Constitution and the American Constitutional tradition. This was first propagated by Prof. A.J. Wilson, who called it a Gaullist Constitution. At the time, he was an Advisor to President J.R. Jayewardene, a role which he publicly lamented about later, after the 1983 riots when the President could only offer him safe passage to the airport to leave Sri Lanka. However, the false statement stuck. Later, others also attributed its creation to the American model. The mention of the similarity between the French and American Constitutions was constantly used by others, and it is being repeated even now. 

In recent debates about the proposed 21st Amendment to the Constitution, the present Minister of Justice Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe PC, in public interviews, has repeated the same false position, and even President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has done the same. 

Therefore, a short explanation about this is necessary. One of the reasons for such an explanation is not merely to expose a false position, but to reveal the dangerous consequences of this position that have affected the nation since 1978 and will continue to do so in the future. 

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