මේව දැකල පණ පලයන් පෙරේදා
Ivan recounts eight numbered first-person incidents about the judiciary: a former PA minister urging a friend to ‘shape’ Ivan over the Chief Justice; a judge’s tale of a colleague who fathered his maid’s child; a journalist spreading word that the government would drop impeachment; talk with an Attorney General’s officer; a judge’s account of W.J.M. Lokubandara’s changed stance; a Constitutional Council member alleged to draw his daughter’s salary; a bribe paid for Sirimavo Bandaranaike in the SLFP case; and Abeysinghe, who tried to strangle Lenin Ratnayake.
අගවිනිසුරුට, ලෙනින් රත්නායකට එරෙහිව අල්ලස් කොමිසමට පැමිණිල්ලක්
In a formal complaint dated 30 July 2002, Ivan asks the Bribery Commission to investigate magistrate Lenin Ratnayake for concealing his dismissal from the Insurance Corporation for claims fraud when becoming a lawyer and magistrate, and Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva for abusing office to protect his relative: misleading the justice minister in a confidential report, suppressing the Supreme Court inquiry into himself, derailing prosecution through an illegal one-man inquiry and withholding the three-judge committee’s findings. Numbered exhibits are listed.
මාධ්ය නිදහස ප්රජාතන්ත්රවාදය
Taking up Lasantha Wickrematunge’s criticism of editors for hiding wrongdoing by the powerful, Ivan welcomes the repeal of criminal defamation and planned media reforms but says freedom means little without responsibility. He recounts how most papers protected magistrate Lenin Ratnayake and Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva, and faults the Editors’ Guild for silence on the Leader ban, the President’s claim that a minister plotted to kill two editors, and the layered cover-up of attacks on journalists under the last government.
තකට තකතකට තක
Ivan argues that under Sarath N. Silva the judiciary became an object of public disgust. Appointed by Kumaratunga while facing charges, he purged judicial officers who would not bend, as the International Bar Association mission noted, and now seeks to reinstate a magistrate found guilty of rape and fraud. He suppressed cases against the PSD and approved the PA’s pre-2000 electoral law, and Ivan warns that disputes under any settlement with the LTTE would go to a Supreme Court headed by such a man.
අධිකරණයේ ගෞරවය කාබාසිනියා කිරීම
The editorial says Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva, kept in office despite grave charges, is dragging the whole judiciary into contempt. He promoted to the High Court a former district judge found guilty after ruling in his favour in his own misconduct case, and is now trying to return to the service a relative magistrate found guilty of two rapes and fraud, by blocking prosecution and setting up an unlawful one-man inquiry under a retired judge close to him.
ස්ත්රී දූෂක මහේස්ත්රාත්යළි අධිකරණ සේවයට
Ivan reports moves to reinstate magistrate Lenin Ratnayake, whom a Judicial Service Commission inquiry of Appeal Court judges Hector Yapa, Asoka de Silva and T.B. Weerasuriya found guilty on all four charges: two rapes of women connected to cases before him, and concealing his dismissal for fraud from the Insurance Corporation. He quotes the charges and the commission’s minutes, summarises the evidence of witnesses, and reproduces extracts of testimony from one victim and from the husband of another.
උපාසක සක සකේ කිකිළි බිජු දෙක දෙකේ
A short satirical note on Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva’s long Vesak article in Lankadeepa on the Noble Eightfold Path, which Ivan says never actually explained the path. If readers took the Chief Justice’s own life as the model, Buddhism would suffer the ruin the courts have. He compares it to magistrate Lenin Ratnayake’s cloak of piety, torn away once he was shown to be a fraud and rapist, and recalls the Buddha’s teaching on the transience of falsehood.
ලෙනින් රත්නායක විනය පරික්ෂණය අත්හිටුවන්නැයි ඉල්ලීමක්
In a letter to the Secretary of the Judicial Service Commission, Ivan, as complainant, objects that a one-man inquiry by retired High Court judge K.A.S. Gunatilake into magistrate Lenin Ratnayake is illegal under Article 114(2). He recounts the rape allegations, the Commission’s months of silence, the three-judge committee that upheld Ravaya’s charges, Ratnayake’s 32 months of paid compulsory leave, and asks for the inquiry to be stopped and the committee’s report released to him.
JSC: More questions than answers
The Judicial Services Commission has answered the criticism in an International Bar Association report on the state of the Sri Lankan judiciary. Its answer, Ivan writes, raises more questions than it settles — and he was the complainant in one of the inquiries it describes.
නීතියේ අනාචාරය
Ivan revisits the adultery case chemical engineer Jayasekera brought against Sarath N. Silva, then an Appeal Court judge. He shows how complaints to K. Palakidnar, Presidents Premadasa and Wijetunga went nowhere, how District Judge Upali Abeyratne’s handling of the case drew disciplinary charges that stalled once Silva became Attorney General and Priyantha Perera joined the Judicial Service Commission, and how Abeyratne was later punished lightly and promoted.