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දෝෂාභියෝගයේ තවත් පැත්තක්
Victor Ivan
Ravaya
Ivan argues that the impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake exposes a constitution built to keep the judiciary subservient: a judge who displeases the executive can be removed by a simple majority, while a president is all but unremovable. He sets her case beside Neville Samarakoon's dignified stand against J.R.
The government set out to fight Shirani Bandaranayake alone, but now faces judges and lawyers united against it. Answering the claim that Parliament is supreme and beyond the courts, the piece argues that Parliament's powers are limited by law and that even a humble employee may not be dismissed without
Comparing the political system to a badly built ship that is sinking, Ivan argues that the clash between executive and judiciary exposes the constitution's subordination of both Parliament and the courts to the president. Yet the courts, he warns, have themselves punished people without fair hearings: the Supreme Court's jailing
Ivan condemns the one-sided procedure by which Parliament's select committee has pursued Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake. He recalls the 1984 inquiry into Chief Justice Neville Samarakoon, when S. Nadesan argued that Parliament had no lawful procedure for trying a judge, and India's Judges (Inquiry) Act of 1968, and explains how
As the clash between the courts and the government intensifies, Ivan defends judges' right to fight for their independence but asks why Sri Lanka's judiciary, unlike those of Britain, the United States and India, has not won public respect. He traces how the Supreme Court, fair in colonial times, failed
Ivan argues that the government's impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake has backfired: it expected her to resign, but the weak charges, the backing she has won from lawyers and the public, and international scrutiny ahead of the March Human Rights Council session have put it on the defensive. He
Ivan compares impeachment procedures in the United States, India, South Africa and Germany, where presidents and senior judges face the same process, with Sri Lanka's, which makes it almost impossible to remove a president but easy for a parliamentary majority to remove a judge, since the charges against judges are
Two of the impeachment charges against the Chief Justice concern her asset declarations, and Ivan argues that whatever their merit they have revived a powerful but neglected law. He explains the 1975 Declaration of Assets and Liabilities Law and its 1988 amendment, which gave any citizen the right to inspect
Ivan sees the government's move to impeach the Chief Justice as part of the collapse of the political system. Comparing the courts of the United States, Britain and India, where the judiciary guards the constitution and the separation of powers, he shows how Sri Lanka's constitution places the courts under
Ivan sets out a fundamental-rights petition by T.R. Ratnasiri, a deputy superintendent of Customs, who for ten years has fought at his own expense to pursue a Rs 619 million customs fraud case against Colombo Dockyard. He traces how the inquiry was halted under a 2003 tax amnesty, revived, then
Ivan argues that the courts, which should protect citizens from abuse of power, have also helped create the crisis. After Neville Samarakoon, Justice Mark Fernando tried to carry forward a creative tradition of fundamental-rights jurisprudence until the Kumaratunga era drove him out; Ivan recounts long conversations with him after his
Building on Alvin Toffler's idea that people living today are the 800th lifetime since the hunting age, Ivan calls his children's generation the 801st, who will live in a fully globalised world. Many Sri Lankans already work abroad, bringing in over US$4 billion in 2010, and more of the coming
After the university teachers, Ivan writes, the stage has been taken by judicial officers and lawyers, provoked by a thug attack on the Secretary of the Judicial Service Commission, who had been publicly criticised by the President. He argues that the 1978 system copied the American presidency without its checks,
Ivan sees the three-month strike by university teachers as another expression of the crisis of the political system. He argues that the education system itself has helped produce the crisis, turning out professionals whose self-interest holds back society, and cites misconduct by leading accountancy firms. He agrees that Sri Lanka's
Ivan calls for better care of orphans kept in state-supervised children's homes, noting that less is spent on their food than on prisoners'. He then recounts cases showing how the justice system favours the powerful over abused children: a High Court judge accused of abusing a young domestic worker who
Ivan argues that three decades of violence have damaged the country's social psyche and that parents must shield children from the resulting culture, including what they see on television. Explaining how fast a child's brain grows between four months and two years, he urges parents to care for mental as
Responding to comments overheard at the funeral of the poet Ratna Sri's wife, Ivan accepts that some of his advice on family life suits the middle class more than the poor, and describes how his own mother lived with his wife in her last years. He then argues that retirement
Writing during the 2012 provincial council elections, Ivan examines the electoral system created in 1978. Quoting Election Commissioner Chandananda de Silva's report on the 1989 election, he argues that the system hands the party holding the presidency control of Parliament and the public service, and that open vote-buying and campaigns
Hearing Sajith Premadasa promise better welfare for the rural poor under a UNP president, Ivan reflects that no change of president can rescue a system that has outlived its time. Prabhakaran's defeat left the traditional political system without its enemy and exposed its decay: an economic crisis alongside lavish infrastructure
Noting that his columns on life draw far more response than those on politics, Ivan continues the family series. Recalling how he mediated in a cousin's mother-in-law dispute, he sets out four principles he taught his own children: married children should live apart from their parents; parents should not depend
