The Promise and the Pause: Has the NPP Parked Constitutional Reform?

When the National People’s Power (NPP) went before the electorate, it did so on a promise that cut deeper than fuel prices or cost-of-living relief. It pledged structural change: a new constitution, the abolition of the executive presidency, and the restoration of democratic authority to Parliament.

It was not a throwaway line. It was a centrepiece.

The executive presidency, long blamed for concentrating power, weakening institutions, and distorting accountability, was framed by the NPP as the original political sin. Its leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, repeatedly assured voters that no individual — including himself — should wield such unchecked authority. Laws, he said, must return to Parliament. Power must be answerable. The people must rule through institutions, not personalities.

That promise helped propel the NPP into office. It also created an expectation that constitutional reform would be an early, visible act of government — a signal that politics-as-usual was over.

Months on, the signal is mixed.

What the NPP promised — clearly

Before the election, the NPP’s position was unambiguous:
The executive presidency would be abolished.
A new constitution would be drafted.
Sovereignty would be exercised through Parliament, with executive authority curtailed and checked.

Any new constitutional framework would ultimately be placed before the people.

This was not rhetorical flourish. It was presented as a moral corrective to decades of centralised rule and constitutional tinkering done for political survival rather than democratic health.

What has happened since

Since assuming office, the government has reiterated its intention to pursue constitutional reform. Committees have been discussed. Studies referenced. The language of reform remains alive in speeches.

But intention is not action.

No draft constitution has been published. No clear timetable has been announced. No referendum date has been proposed. Parliament has not been presented with a concrete legislative pathway for dismantling the executive presidency — an office the current president still occupies in full.

Supporters argue that economic stabilisation must come first, that constitutional change requires care, consensus and time. Critics counter that constitutional reform was not promised after recovery, but as part of it — a prerequisite for restoring trust in governance.

The political dilemma

Here lies the NPP’s first real governing paradox.

To abolish the executive presidency, one must first wield it. The temptation to retain its powers — even temporarily — is obvious. But so is the risk. Every month that passes without visible progress blurs the moral contrast the NPP drew between itself and its predecessors.

Sri Lanka’s political graveyard is full of leaders who promised to dismantle executive power “later”.

Voters remember.

Is Parliament being restored — or bypassed?

Another core assurance was that all laws would return firmly within the parliamentary process, ending rule by gazette, circular and executive fiat. While Parliament is active, critics note that decision-making remains heavily centralised within the executive, with limited evidence so far of a rebalanced constitutional order.

The danger is not authoritarian relapse, but democratic drift: reform delayed until urgency fades, until the extraordinary becomes routine once again.

Why this matters

Constitutional reform is not a technical exercise. It is a trust exercise.

The NPP did not campaign merely as a competent manager of crisis, but as a movement to reset the republic. If the executive presidency survives this term — even in softened form — the party will struggle to explain why it could not dismantle the very structure it identified as Sri Lanka’s central democratic failure.

The test ahead

The question is no longer whether the NPP believes in constitutional reform. The question is whether it will spend its political capital on it — early, visibly, and at risk to itself.

Front-page politics is unforgiving. Mandates expire faster than memories.

For now, the NPP still has time. But time, like executive power, has a way of entrenching itself. And in Sri Lanka, promises delayed have a habit of becoming promises denied.