Statement By The Centre For Policy Alternatives on Praja Shakthi, Clean Sri Lanka, and the Constitutional Integrity of the Sri Lankan State

2 May 2026, Colombo:

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) expresses serious concern about the implications of the JVP–NPP government’s Praja Shakthi and Clean Sri Lanka programmes for the institutional fabric of constitutional government and public administration in Sri Lanka. While reform of governance is both necessary and overdue, the manner in which these initiatives are being conceived and implemented raises fundamental questions about constitutional principle, administrative autonomy, and devolved and local governance. These questions go to the heart of the long-term quality of our democracy and the future stability of the state.

Sri Lanka’s constitutional and legal framework of executive government, together with well-established conventions of public administration, is historically nested within the Commonwealth tradition of constitutional government. Within this tradition, notwithstanding the introduction of a directly elected executive President by the 1978 Constitution, the political executive derives much of its authority from Parliament and both President and Ministers remain accountable to it and to the public. The administrative executive – the public service – is expected to be politically neutral, professionally competent, and permanent, serving the government of the day while remaining insulated from partisan control. These distinctions are not mere formalities. They are the institutional preconditions for responsible government, the rule of law, and the protection of fundamental rights.

It is in this context that CPA is deeply troubled by the JVP–NPP government’s apparent insertion of a pervasive parallel layer of party bureaucracy into the apparatus of the state, from the highest levels of administration to the lowest. Through Praja Shakthi structures and Clean Sri Lanka implementation mechanisms, not to mention openly politicised appointments to senior administrative service positions, there is growing evidence of party-aligned actors being emplaced to exercise influence over decisions that properly belong to the professional public service; or are decisions that must be made by elected officials acting on impartial public service advice and accountable to national, provincial, and local legislatures, not by functionaries  and commissars answering to party headquarters at Pelawatte. This therefore represents not simply politicisation in the familiar sense, but the construction of an alternative chain of authority that runs alongside – and increasingly through – the constitutional state.

This development is categorically different from the old patronage politics of the ‘bourgeois’ parties. What distinguishes the present moment is the presence of an amorphously articulated yet clearly visible ideological framework – depending on whether one is listening to Anura Kumara Dissanayake or Tilvin Silva –  through which the government appears to be instrumentalising, and in some cases subordinating, the institutions of the state to the imperatives of the party. Rhetorically encoded as NPP anti‑corruption action, the JVP’s Marxist-Leninist praxes are being hardwired into everyday administration, fundamentally altering the relationship between party, state, and public service. As it was the case with the UF government and the 1972 Constitution, this will erode the constitutional boundaries that safeguard the institutional autonomy of the public service and destroy what institutional competence and social trust it has left.

There is also an emerging and dangerous mismatch between public expectation and governmental intent. Many citizens who voted for the JVP–NPP in 2024 did so in the hope of “system change” understood as anti-corruption, accountability, and a restoration of administrative integrity. This electoral mandate was secured through the JVP’s rebranding as the NPP, a project that blunted the sharp edges of revolutionary socialism and class antagonism and repackaged them as a programme of social democratic respectability. What now appears to be unfolding is a reversal of that process and a far more ambitious attempt at an ideological reframing of the Sri Lankan state itself. This is not reform of the system. It is an effort to reconfigure the system according to a partisan and ideological vision that was neither clearly articulated nor democratically deliberated at the time of the 2024 national elections.

Sri Lanka’s modern constitutional order has evolved over two centuries through political habit, legal practice, institutional memory, and constitutional convention, which are our own but which are rooted in the pragmatism and moderation of the Commonwealth tradition, not in revolutionary ideology or class politics. Tampering with this inheritance through the systematic politicisation of administration risks long-term damage to state capacity, professionalism, and public trust. The design and operation of programmes such as Praja Shakthi and Clean Sri Lankamust be critically reassessed with a view to reaffirming the independence of the public service and ensuring that any programme of reform remains firmly anchored in constitutional principle. The alternative is an erosion of constitutional government that will not end well for Sri Lanka’s democracy or its people.