Sri Lanka Muslim party to challenge constitution change

(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Sri Lanka's top Muslim political party has threatened to block a proposed constitutional amendment on the grounds that it does not satisfactorily cater for the island's ethnic and religious minorities.

The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress has complained about a proposed 20th amendment, which would increase the number of lawmakers in parliament and how they are elected.

The party's Secretary General T. Hassen Ali said it could be compelled to challenge the proposed amendment for not adequately accommodating minority views, if it is presented to parliament in its current form.

The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress decided its own position after 20 minority parties, including the Tamil National Alliance which represents the large ethnic Tamil minority, met Sunday to discuss their concerns.

"Almost all minor and minority parties are having problems with the current draft. It is only fair to consider our amendments, in good faith," said Ali.

Minority parties have complained the addition of 12 seats to parliament would not be enough because of an accompanying change in electoral system which would mean almost half of seats being chosen through a proportional representation system, alongside the traditional first past the post method which elects lawmakers by constituency.

Ali said the government had expected all parties to provisionally approve the existing draft then to later move amendments during the second reading of the constitutional bill.

"That could be too late and too costly, if we were to propose serious amendments," he said.

He argued that the Muslim community should have at least 10 percent of the seats in parliament and argued multi-member seats should be introduced to ensure fair representation for Muslims.

Ali insisted that in principle his party supported the initiative to make changes to a seriously flawed system "but it should be fair by all communities."