By Sugeewara Sendhira/Daily News
Colombo, December 31: Sri Lanka’s 90 years of experience in democratic governance had ensured the gradual development of a liberal society in which the citizens enjoy many freedoms and rights. However, certain important responsibilities of individuals and groups towards the country had been pushed to the back seat. This is more evident now than before.
The cabinet’s collective responsibility, also known as Collective Ministerial Responsibility, is a Constitutional Convention in all parliamentary systems. In this, members of the cabinet must publicly support all governmental decisions made in the cabinet, even if they do not privately agree with them. This convention has been forgotten or ignored by some.
Ministers are responsible to Parliament for the conduct of their individual ministries and the government as a whole. This responsibility ensures the accountability of the government to the legislature and thus, ultimately, to the people. This principle is mainly based on a body of constitutional conventions, established by precedents, rather than through statutes.
In most democratic countries, the legal standing of ministerial responsibility is also based on the oath taken by each minister upon becoming a member of the Cabinet.
Brexit Plan
Four years ago, the then British Prime Minister, Theresa May, told her Conservative Ministers that they must adhere to the convention of collective responsibility and support the agreed Brexit plan. Those who did not want the Brexit plan had to resign. The Prime Minister thus accepted the resignation of her Brexit Secretary David Davis, and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who opposed the Bill. In his resignation letter, Davis wrote that he did not support the new agreed strategy and was following the collective responsibility convention in resigning from his position.
Collective responsibility is actually a convention rather than a legal requirement. Ministers are nonetheless expected to show a united front on all government actions and policies. In practice, this means that decisions taken by the cabinet are binding on all its Members.. According to the Cabinet Manual, should a Minister feel that he or she cannot abide by the public “united front” requirement, then the best option is resignation from the ministerial portfolio.
Another famous example of the convention in practice was the resignation of Robin Cook in 2003 as Leader of the House of Commons in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labor Government. Under the collective responsibility rules, Cook was unable to publicly speak out about his objections to the war in Iraq that began in March 2003. Following the tenets of the convention, he resigned from his office, and spoke from the backbenches of his disagreement with the government’s position.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa addressing newspaper editors recently said it would have been better if ministers Wimal Weerawansa, Udaya Gammanpila and Vasudeva Nanayakkara had resigned as ministers before challenging a collective cabinet decision on the Yugadanavi Power Plant agreement with an American company New Fortress Energy. He said in reply to a question by an editor for his comments on these ministers going to the Supreme Court on the issue. Asked whether the three Ministers would be sacked, the President said there was no need to do so, thus indicating his belief in the freedom of expression.
A bench of Supreme Court Judges held that in the teeth of Article 38 of the Constitution, the court cannot hold that a Member of Parliament who belongs to the same political party as the President, who is also the Leader of that Party, may not sign a notice of resolution for the removal of such President; and that the mere act of signing such notice will make him liable to disciplinary action by the party.
“Nor have we been called upon to consider such a question. In my understanding, the petitioners have been expelled for signing the notice together with the Opposition without first raising the allegations within the party; the ground of expulsion based on their conduct in campaigning against the Executive Presidency is not directed against the freedom of speech, the allegation being that they did so without first raising it within the party; in this connection Mr. Choksy properly conceded that had the petitioners been capriciously thwarted in attempting to raise the issues within the party, they would be entitled to agitate them in public. It follows that in such a situation the petitioners would also be entitled to sign the resolution for the removal of the President without further constraint. In the circumstances, there has been no violation of Article 38,” the Court stated.
In 1987, Minister Gamani Jayasuriya gave an excellent example of the convention of collective responsibility. He resigned from the Cabinet and voted against the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement (ISLA). However, two other staunch opponents of the ISLA, Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa and Minister Lalith Athulathmudali, did not leave the cabinet but abstained from voting.
It is of paramount importance to maintain unity because a breakdown of collective responsibility can have major political costs. The frequent leaking of cabinet discussions undermines the Ministers’ willingness to contribute honestly to policy discussions, and governments which fail to maintain a unified public view are vulnerable to attacks from parties in the Opposition.
Breakdown in discipline
During the Brexit plan, there was an unprecedented breakdown in discipline amongst Theresa May’s cabinet. The Government’s Chief Whip Julian Smith criticized ministers for their unruly conduct, saying that it is the ‘worst example of ill-discipline in the cabinet in British political history’. Several cabinet ministers and other junior ministers first defied Government orders by abstaining rather than voting against a motion to prevent the UK leaving the European Union (EU) without a deal. The Ministers did so without resigning. However, the Prime Minister’s open statement on collective responsibility settled the issue as those who opposed the Brexit plan resigned from the cabinet.
These incidents have resulted in a national debate on the convention of collective responsibility. The convention was relaxed and on some national issues, ministers were given the choice of voting for or against. During the 2016 EU referendum campaign, ministers were given freedom to campaign for either side of the vote.
Collective responsibility was suspended in October 2016, so that British ministers could maintain individual positions on the decision to build a third runway at the Heathrow International Airport.
In both cases, there were rules about how far the ministers could diverge from government policy. For example, former Prime Minister David Cameron allowed the ministers to publicly disagree with the government’s stated ‘Remain’ [in the EU] position during the Brexit referendum campaign. However, in a letter to ministers, he made it clear that this exception only applied to “the question of whether we should remain in the EU or leave”.
The Convention of Collective Responsibility still applied to all “other EU or EU-related business”, in addition to the government’s domestic policies.
However, there is unanimous agreement in the United Kingdom that the principle of collective responsibility and the need to safeguard national security, relations with other countries and the confidential nature of discussions between ministers and their civil servants impose certain obligations on not only incumbent ministers but also former ministers who are contemplating the publication of material based on their recollection of the conduct of government business in which they took part. They are required to submit their manuscript to the Secretary of the Cabinet and to conform to the principles set out in the Radcliffe Report of 1976.
Ministers Weerawansa, Gammanpila and Nanayakkara have cited freedom of expression and constructive criticism to defend their opposition to the Yugadanavi Power Plant deal. However, the Supreme Court verdict on Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake and others stated that: “There has been no violation of their freedom of speech as all that has been questioned is the propriety of the manner of exercising such freedom; as is evident from the language used by them some of which are per se defamatory, they have exceeded the bounds of such freedom. There is, therefore, no violation of Article 14(1)(a). The Freedom of Conscience under Article 10 has not been infringed thus.”
Furthermore, the Supreme Court stated: “It does not connote the ordinary right which every individual has to make decisions or to support a system of his choice according to his conviction and judgement. This in fact appears to be the right which the petitioners are asserting in their campaign against the Executive Presidential System.”
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