Can someone else become president if Gotabhaya does not resign?: Lawyer Jagath Gunawardena explains

Lawyer Jagath Gunawardena has explained the situation if the current President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa does not resign from his position.

The full explanation is given below.

"This question has been answered frequently since the beginning of the struggle last April as well as over the past few days.

For this reason, it would be appropriate to take into consideration the views expressed from the beginning as well as the current situation (on the morning of July 14).

According to the current situation, if the current president does not resign from office in the future;

Will this regime last until the next presidential election?

Can the President be removed by impeachment?

Is there a method outside of these two?

Three basic questions arise.

The answer to the first question depends on the extent to which the people of this country and the existing parties accept this current situation.

The answer to the second question is whether it is possible to do so, but to what extent it is practical, depending on the time and uncertainties involved.

The answer to the third question has two parts.

The first part of this is that there is no system in the current constitution. So what? The answer to the second part is, what can be done in an impasse or constitutional vacuum? is to go

For this, similar situations seen in other countries and what happened in them will give us precedents on one hand and warnings on the other hand.

Therefore, it is thought that what can be learned from these precedents as well as dangerous situations should be examined carefully.

Government regime In these crises, we receive warnings from many countries of the world. The military coup in Argentina in 1976, when Mavisin started studying the cases in other countries of the world, as well as the military coup in Pakistan in 1977 by Zia-ul-Haq and the military coup in Turkey in 1980, have given us more than just examples of the dangerous situation.

But, in such cases, there are several cases where the uncertain situation of such a power is completely unconstitutional and exceeded in a non-military way. The first of these in my lifetime happened in 1979 in Iran.

When Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran came to the country (in February 1979), the Shah of Iran was out of the country on "vacation", so he became the legitimate emperor and his appointed Acharya Shapoor Bakhtiar became the legitimate Prime Minister of the country. Meanwhile, Khomeini was not in any official position. However, as soon as he arrived in Iran, he named Acharya Medi Basagan, a leader of the opposition and a generally accepted figure, as Prime Minister. Although this written appointment was in no way legal, Basagan was accepted by the majority of the country's people, junior ranks of the security forces, and the state apparatus including the administrative service, ending the Bakhtiyar rule and the Shah's rule. The constitution that made Iran an Islamic Republic and Ayatollah Khomeini the spiritual leader of the country was passed much later. The first photo shows the moment when Basagan was appointed.

In the face of the protests against the President of Madagascar in 2009, he remained in office and on the general agreement of the opposition, Andre Rajoliana was sworn in as a democratic leader in May 2009 in front of a large crowd at the country's open-air stadium.

He also received the support of the majority of the country's people as well as the armed forces and the regime and soon the power to hold office was obtained through the army.

Because of this, the United Nations and some abroad, which condemned it as another form of military coup, later recognized Rajoliana as the legitimate leader. Also, the Supreme Court of the country has given the approval that the action is in accordance with the law.

The second photo shows Rajoliana's swearing-in in 2009.

Although the Legislative Assembly of the country admitted that the then President Laurent Gbagbo won the 2010 elections in Ivory Coast, the Electoral Commission declared that the opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara won the election.

Thus both took oath of office separately and Uvattara took oath from his safe place. But even though the country's Prime Minister Guoliome Soro accepted that he was the president of the opposition, the regime and the army could be seen divided into two. However, Ouattara's popularity increased in the following weeks, leading to Laurent Gbagbo's ouster in April 2011 by armed factions loyal to him. The third photo shows the arrested Gbagbo crying.

A number of common factors can be highlighted from all these three cases.

They are;

Having a problem with the legality of the appointment in the first place.

Getting the majority of people's consent to the new appointment.

Acceptance of the new appointment by the armed forces or their majority

Acknowledgment of new appointment by administrative structures.

Obtaining necessary approval for new appointment and later acquiring legal validity.

Because of this, it can be pointed out based on the above examples that there may be solutions that are in the middle of the two extremes of the existing regime and the military regime and are essentially democratic, but at the very beginning, the legitimacy may be questioned, and it is important to think creatively about them."