අඬමුද? සිනාසෙමුද?
This article critically examines the controversial tenure and actions of former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, detailing his abuse of judicial power for personal and political gain. It outlines his role in imprisoning S.B. Dissanayake to appease President Chandrika Kumaratunga, his subsequent legal betrayal of Kumaratunga following a personal insult regarding his behavior toward women, and his intimidation of treasury officials to secure an abnormally high pension. The author also provides a detailed investigative account of a 2004 incident near Diyawanna Oya, where police allegedly found the Chief Justice half-naked in a parked vehicle with a woman, using the cover-up of this event to highlight the systemic corruption and apathy within Sri Lanka’s political, parliamentary, and judicial systems.
මැතිවරණ කොමසාරිස් වත්කම් බැරකම් නීතිය
Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya collected candidates’ asset declarations with zeal, Ivan argues, only to lock them away, telling Ravaya that the public needs a court order to see them. The 1988 amendment to the Declaration of Assets and Liabilities Law gives anyone the right to certified copies for a fee. Ivan recounts how he first saw Lalith Athulathmudali’s declaration, the People’s Alliance’s broken 1994 pledge to publish ministers’ assets, the Speaker who complied and the President’s office that did not, and reproduces a 2005 letter from Deshapriya’s predecessor sending him six declarations — disproving the claim that there is no precedent.
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.
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.
සෝභිත හිමිගේ පැතුම
Unable to attend Maduluwawe Sobitha Thero’s 70th birthday, Ivan honours him as one of the few learned people who never stayed silent in the face of wrongdoing. He recalls telling two vice-chancellors, G.L. Peiris and Arjuna Aluwihare, after the second JVP revolt that intellectuals’ silence was the cause of youth rebellion. Sobitha Thero called for abolishing the executive presidency and changing the electoral system in his lifetime, and Ivan notes a growing chorus — Maithripala Sirisena, Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa, government MPs, the Communist Party, the JHU — for change. He contrasts the old Westminster system, with by-elections, constituency MPs, spending limits and a Prime Minister in Parliament, with the executive presidency, which concentrates power in one person above the law and turns governance into a system of plunder.
ප්රතිසන්ධානය හා ගෝඨාභය සාධකය
Ivan rejects Uvindu Kurukulasuriya’s website report that at a dinner with Minister DEW Gunasekera he had plotted to save the government and blamed Gotabaya Rajapaksa for every problem; the report, he says, rested on a third-hand source. The talks were among many long one-to-one discussions he held with politicians of all sides to test support for a national programme to rebuild the state and nation, which he believes many would accept. Leaders need not be ideal — South Africa’s transition, Cromwell and Lenin show that — so the chance must not be missed. He credits Gotabaya Rajapaksa with the war’s strategy, with bringing Sarath Fonseka forward, and with resettlement and rehabilitation, but says abductions, including of Frontline Socialist Party activists, and extra-legal drives against drug dealers are squandering that honour; he must adapt to peace or lose everything.
ජිනීවා අර්බුදය-
Sri Lanka was right to oppose the US resolution at the Human Rights Council, Ivan writes, but its campaign damaged the country’s name — ending with Minister Mervyn Silva’s boast that he had Poddala Jayantha beaten and would punish others who went to Geneva. He warns against the view that the balance of power is shifting to China, arguing that India, soon larger and younger and closer to Western values, matters more to a country that lives ‘in India’s mouth’. National sovereignty is relative: as a UN member bound by the ICCPR, Sri Lanka cannot treat the Council’s action as unlawful. The war was fought within a civilised framework, but the Foreign Ministry lost the propaganda war, letting support fall from 32 votes in 2009 to 15 in 2012. The best course is to go beyond the resolution with a national programme to rebuild the state.
When must the Presidential Election be held?
Was Chandrika Kumaratunga’s second term due to end in December 2005 or December 2006? Victor Ivan works through the constitutional arithmetic. G.L. Peiris holds that the public oath of 22 December 1999 governs, making the election due in 2005; Mangala Samaraweera replies that a two-term president is entitled to twelve years, placing it in 2006 and resting on an oath the President is said to have taken in secret on 12 November 2000. Ivan tests the twelve-year claim against J.R. Jayewardene, who served two terms and got eleven: having gone to the country early in October 1982, he took his second oath in February 1983 and lost a year. Article 31(3A)(d), quoted in full, sets the term from the date of the oath. He then explains why she took the December oath at all — after the bomb attack on her campaign, her advisers invoked the doctrine of necessity so that her death would not force a fresh election, an insurance that has since become a liability. A secret oath cannot invalidate a public one, he concludes, and any attempt to make it do so will bring on another crisis.
බිබික්කම ලස්සන කිරීම
G.L. Peiris told The Hindu that the UNP backs an executive presidency, but a reformed one. Ivan lists the further reforms such a system would need, recounts how a joint reform proposal failed when Uduwe Dhammaloka Thera’s signed copy never came back, and closes with sections on ‘the Chief Justice of the Dharma State’ and ‘a hunter’s sermon’.
කෙළෙහි ගුණ දැක්වීම
Ivan notes that the President was met in London by Ronnie Peiris, who had helped her in exile after Vijaya Kumaratunga’s murder and has since grown rich, and says the UNP’s promised inquiries into such figures have gone quiet. Further sections note that she named Sarath N. Silva as a drafter of her constitution though he sat on the bench reviewing it, praise Anton Balasingham’s endorsement of Neelan Tiruchelvam’s 1996 devolution plan, and ask why no one has sought Tony Fernando’s release.