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Flogging a dead horse
Sunday, 30 December 2012 - 1:24 AM SL Time
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The left allies of the ruling UPFA coalition have reportedly expressed their disappointment over President Mahinda Rajapaksa s refusal to prorogue Parliament and thereby stall impeachment process against Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake. The President does not seem to care a damn about their disapprobation. After all, he is the boss! He knows they will have to fall in line sooner or later it s a case of Hobson s choice for them. Whether they will have the intestinal fortitude either to vote against the impeachment motion or abstain when it is taken up in Parliament remains to be seen. However, the leftists have, in spite of being saataka-gagged, managed to make their convictions known to the electorate. That must be some consolation for them. Hopefully, the political greats of yesteryear like NM, Colvin and Muttetuwegama will stop backflipping in their graves!
What has developed into a mega crisis of sorts is a personal tussle between the Rajapaksas and the Bandaranayakes. If President Rajapaksa had not forced Chief Justice Bandaranayake s husband, Pradeep Kariyawasam to resign as the NSB Chairman over a share racket and if the CJ had desisted from ruffling President Rajapaksa s feathers by publicly turning down his invitation to a powwow and offending the ruling clan with a stinging court ruling (on Divineguma Bill), there would not have been any friction between the legislature (controlled by the Executive) and the judiciary.
Both the President and the CJ acted in such a manner in settling their personal scores that the institutions under them were sucked into a political vortex. Others are trying to fish in troubled waters. Now, it is a full-blown political war where a compromise has the same chance as a cat in hell. The Opposition bigwigs who initially demanded that the CJ be impeached and her husband hauled up before the bribery commission have changed their tune and risen in defence of the beleaguered CJ! Their adeptness at making U-turns is truly remarkable.
Giving power and money to politicians is said to be like giving whisky and car keys to unruly teenagers. The government is to be blamed for the present crisis but others are not blameless. All parties to the on-going dispute have remained impervious to rational argument and reason. They have been fighting a battle for supremacy. It is no surprise that the veteran leftists who sought to knock some sense into them have failed in their endeavour.
The government is all set to bulldoze its way through and the CJ stands firm with the Opposition taking cover behind her. The outcome of this inevitable confrontation is not difficult to predict.
What has enabled politicians in power, both past and present, to act according to their whims and fancies is a flawed basic law. Unfortunately, successive governments, the judiciary and the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) have let the grass grow under their feet all these years without attending to the gaping holes in the Constitution through which any executive president could drive a coach and horses. In fact, it was designed that way to help the late President J. R. Jayewardene reign supreme in his twilight years. It was when the JRJ government tried to impeach Chief Justice Neville Samarakoon that the BASL should have taken up the issue of constitutional flaws, main being the absence of due process. It has swung into action too late in the day, but better late than never! However, it should act sensibly without resorting to political gimmicks if it is to shape public opinion, which is not usually favourable to the legal fraternity.
It is high time all stakeholders put their heads together and made a concerted effort to fix the holes in the Constitution setting out a procedure devoid of ambiguity for removing judicial officers. That is the least they could do to prevent the country from inching towards anarchy.
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