Efficacy of Constitutional Reform on Strengthening Good Governance Practice: A Case Study on 19th Amendment to the Constitution on Accountable Governance in Sri Lanka

Abstract

During the recent past, issues related to the governance have been gaining much attention among the academics as well as policy makers. The failure of achieving anticipated development objectives and the burden of the newly emerging socio-economic needs have paved the way for governance reforms. Emergence of good governance reforms, particularly in developing word, became the bandwagon of the governance policy discourses in the end of the 1990s and first decades of the millennium. with thirty year protracted civil war in Sri Lanka seeks more accountable, corruption and waste free government after the conclusion of the war. This argument raised by the opposition alliance acknowledged the constituencies by changing the ruling regime. Newly appointed government brought the constitutional amendment into the constitution to establish the promised good governance atmosphere in Sri Lanka in 2015. This paper explore the efficacy of the constitutional reform introduced under the 19th amendment to the constitution on enhance the accountability of the governance in Sri Lanka. This is a case study and qualitative secondary data based research in nature. This study reveal that, the legal and institutional reforms introduced under the 19th amendment to the constitution for strengthening accountability of the democratic government have paved the way for the institutional and procedural changes. The changes brought into the immunity of the president under the article 35 of the constitution and the establishment of Constitutional Commission, the Audit Service Commission, the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption, The National Procurement Commission under the article 41 (B) can be shown for instance. However, whatever the legal, procedural and intuitional changes introduced, it is evident that most of them are related to strengthening accountability in the administration spheres. Therefore, this study brings policy suggestion that, in order to enhance the accountability of the democratic governance, its requires, the administrative accountability and the consolidation of the political accountability. For this government reforms must include election reforms which bring the check and balance between political and permeant executives and the people representatives and the constituencies simultaneously. Moreover, in order to sustain the accountability of the governance, such reform must be fit to prevailed political culture in Sri Lanka.