20 April 2026
The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) welcomes the resignation of Kumara Jayakody MP as the Minister for Energy on 17 April 2026, for which we publicly called earlier. While from the perspective of constitutional governance the resignation is a case of better late than never, we note that the Government’s display of delay and drift before reaching this conclusion was wholly unnecessary and damaging to our fabric of constitutional governance.
Sri Lanka’s current constitutional framework on executive government is built upon the earlier foundations of the Westminster-type constitutions we have had since independence. Our Ministers are drawn from and remain Members of Parliament. Through Questions, Committees, and the Confidence Principle, our Cabinet is collectively as well as individually responsible to Parliament. These institutions and procedures are found expressed in the hard law of the Constitution and in the soft rules of the Standing Orders.
But as in any other Commonwealth country, this legal framework of power and accountability is meant to be animated by a wider set of political principles – known as ‘constitutional conventions’ – that ensure not just lawful but constitutional behaviour by members of the political executive. The distinction between legality and constitutionality is important: it reminds us that power must be exercised not merely in accordance with the letter of the law but also in conformity with the political morality of the republic. Constitutional conventions can be described in many different ways but three of their most important dimensions are: that they embody a country’s constitutional morality; that they have to be understood and accepted by the governing elite irrespective of party; and that they are only effective to the extent they are politically enforced. Governing with knowledge of, and consistently with constitutional conventions, builds public confidence in institutions, strengthens democracy and constitutionalism, builds social trust across party political divides, and in all these ways, delivers peace, order, and good government.
In functioning Commonwealth constitutional democracies, conventions are most widespread in relation to the exercise of executive power. Ministers are held to a higher standard of behaviour than ordinary citizens or even other MPs. They are accountable not only legally to the courts, but also politically to Parliament and the public. When a Minister faces serious allegations of corruption, fraud, or incompetence, convention demands that he or she resigns or is dismissed until those allegations have been investigated and resolved. The presumption of innocence that ordinary citizens have the benefit of in relation to criminal proceedings have no relevance whatsoever to the question of ministerial political accountability. There does not have to be a CID investigation, an indictment by the Bribery Commission, or a damning finding by the Auditor General, or a vote of confidence in Parliament, or the announcement of a Presidential Commission of Inquiry, before there is a ministerial resignation. Jayakody’s ministerial resignation should have been the first step in dealing with the coal scandal when it first surfaced in 2025, especially in the case of a high-minded Government elected on such an explicit and even revolutionary mandate to sweep away the decayed culture of the old regime.
That the country was treated to the spectacle of all this drama before the Minister and his appointing authority the President considered it appropriate for him to resign may have many explanations. But one of the saddest revelations in the ongoing saga of the coal scandal so far must surely be that absolutely no one in our new governing elite showed the slightest understanding of the conventions of our constitution. They embody the very principles that must be upheld, and the Government must be seen to be upholding, if we are to retain any confidence in the reformist promise of the NPP.