The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) disagreed over a key aspect of the new proposed new constitution – the abolition of the Executive Presidency.

The viewpoints of both parties have been mentioned under Appendix of the steering committee report, presented to Parliament by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday.

The SLFP’s viewpoint was conveyed by Ministers Nimal Siripala de Silva, Susil Premajayantha and Dilan Perera, who represented the party in the committee.

“The opinion of the SLFP is that complete abolition of the Executive Presidency, that is present today is not prudent. Considering various terrorist and extremist activities that happen in various countries in the world, the SLFP believes a President should be elected directly from the public mandate with a certain amount of powers to protect the unitary status of the country and to keep and to protect the stability of the country specially in a situation where a large volume of power is granted to the Provincial Councils,” the SLFP said.

Meanwhile, the JVP said the Executive Presidency should be completely abolished.

The party, which was represented in the committee by party leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Bimal Ratnaike said, it did not however support the introduction of an Executive Prime Minister system, replacing the Executive Presidency.