දෝෂාභියෝගයේ තවත් පැත්තක්
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. Jayewardene, reads the 1,575-page select committee report and finds the key charge unproven, yet holds that her part in buying a Trillium Residencies flat left her with a moral lapse of her own.
අධිකරණ අර්බුදයේ ගමන් මග
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 due process. It recalls the 1984 Samarakoon inquiry, when S. Nadesan and the Civil Rights Movement protested and opposition members agreed that a lawful procedure was needed, and the Kumaratunga government’s 2000 draft constitution, whose Article 151 provided a proper procedure for removing judges, and warns that without such reform the country faces anarchy.
අර්බුදයේ තවත් පැතිකඩක්
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 of Tony Fernando for contempt, which the UN Human Rights Committee found unlawful; the contempt case against S.B. Dissanayake; and the treatment of the lawyer Elmo Perera under Sarath N. Silva. Serious allegations against Sarath N. Silva and Asoka de Silva were ignored while they served governments, so if the judiciary wins without changing its attitudes it may become arrogant.
අහෝ පාර්ලිමේන්තුව
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 Parliament gained and then voluntarily gave up judicial power over privilege, citing his own privilege case in 1992. He lists eight faults in the present inquiry, from charges without supporting evidence to no list of witnesses and undue haste, and predicts that the President’s unease will embolden those resisting.
අධිකරණයේ කාර්යභාරය විවේචනාත්මක විමසීමක්
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 at key moments: allowing the 1982 referendum to extend Parliament’s term, the handling of presidential term limits and crossovers, failing to rescue the 17th Amendment and approving the 18th, and weak orders on election law. The judiciary, he concludes, is paying for its own mistakes.
නයාට ගසා පොල්ල වරද්දා ගැනීම
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 lists this as the fourth clash between executive and judiciary under the 1978 system, after Neville Samarakoon’s time and Mark Fernando’s under Kumaratunga, and warns of a constitutional crisis if Parliament ignores a Supreme Court order, while noting that the judiciary is not blameless for the decline it now suffers.
ශ්රී ලංකාවේ ක්රියාත්මක වන දෝෂාභියෝග ක්රමය (විවේචනාත්මක විශ්ලේෂණයක්)
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 heard by a select committee of MPs under standing orders. That imbalance, he argues, is why presidents need a loyal Supreme Court. Drawing on his own objection in the 1990s to being tried by Parliament for breach of privilege without a lawful procedure, he argues that Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake too is entitled to a fair hearing.
අගවිනිසුරුගේ දෝෂාභියෝගයෙන් පන පෙවෙන වත්කම් බැරකම් නීතිය
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 declarations and did not exempt the president. He recounts learning of the law from MP C.V. Gooneratne in the late 1980s, asking the Secretary-General of Parliament for MPs’ declarations, persuading G.L. Peiris, and later testing the Kumaratunga government and the Election Commissioners, and calls for the law to be updated and strictly enforced.
දේශපාලන ක්රමය සමග අධිකරණයේ බිඳ වැටීම
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 the president, who appoints all senior judges, and limits their review of legislation. He criticises the Supreme Court for failing to be creative, from approving the 1982 referendum that extended Parliament’s life to its handling of the 17th Amendment, and traces the decline back beyond Sarath N. Silva to G.P.S. de Silva’s time.
ක්රමය කුණුවී තිබෙන තරම පෙන්නුම් කරන නඩුවක්
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 undermined by three judgments of Sarath N. Silva that curtailed Customs’ powers, and how the petition accuses Attorney General Mohan Peiris and Treasury Secretary P.B. Jayasundera of acting to have the appeal withdrawn over the Director General’s objections. The courts, he notes, have shown little interest in hearing it.