Person: Mark Fernando

ජේ.ආර්.ගෙන් ඉගෙන ගැනීම

Ivan argues that the government won the battle over the Chief Justice at a ruinous cost, leaving constitutional interpretation and the writ jurisdiction hollow. He faults the judges and lawyers for fighting like a political party, recalls the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear his own challenge to Sarath N. Silva’s appointment, and draws a close parallel between Mahinda Rajapaksa’s removal of Shirani Bandaranayake and J.R. Jayewardene’s stripping of Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s civic rights, warning that Jayewardene’s drive for unchangeable power ended in Black July, two insurrections and his own humiliation.

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.

අර්බුදයේ තවත් වැදගත් පැතිකඩක්

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 retirement about the 1978 constitution, which Fernando helped draft with Sarath Coorey and A.J. Wilson. Citing Sarath N. Silva’s near-confession over the Helping Hambantota case and Ranil Wickremesinghe on crossovers, he argues that the courts have distorted the law, and that the bureaucracy and the rich who control governments share the blame with politicians.

සටන් කිරීම හා අවසාන සටන

Challenged by a friend who says he has turned from a fighter into a preacher, Ivan explains that his aim now is not a change of government but a change of the political system, which needs the support even of those tied to the evil. Prompted by Ravaya’s 25th anniversary, he lists the eight real battles of his career — against the parliamentary privileges law, the 17-year UNP government, criminal defamation, for the assets law, against two court decisions, an outside Elections Commissioner, a retiring President’s taking of state property, and the limits of book publishing — and says he lost only one, blaming K.N. Choksy’s concession in court. His ten-year struggle with Sarath N. Silva ended without result, he argues, because the Bar, media owners, parties and senior judges such as Mark Fernando stayed silent; Silva never used contempt law against him, which Ivan attributes to the remnant of conscience he appealed to.

අවලස්සණ ජනාධිපතිවරණයක්

Three weeks before the January 2010 presidential election, Ivan argues the contest between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka has taken the shape of a fight between two bazaar thugs rather than between democratic forces. Both camps breach the law on cutouts and posters, and neither the police nor the Elections Commissioner will enforce it. He traces the collapse to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s appointment of Sarath Nanda Silva as Chief Justice over the senior Mark Fernando, while corruption complaints against Silva were still before the court. Silva, once the target of a joint UNP–JVP impeachment motion, is now the opposition campaign’s constitutional spokesman. Ivan concludes that defeating a man will not change a system, and no party has said what should replace the executive presidency.

නිල බලයට හෝ රාජ්‍ය බලයට සත්‍යය සදා යටපත් කළ නොහැකිය

Ivan welcomes the Human Rights Committee’s ruling as historic: the first time a Sri Lankan Supreme Court judgment in a fundamental rights case has been answered by an international body. He recounts the criminal defamation indictments brought against him before and after 1994, the Attorney General Sarath N. Silva’s role, the petition argued by Suranjith Hewamanne, his quarrel with Silva over the 1971 case, and other cases now before Geneva.

අල්ලස් දූෂණ, දේශපාලනය හා යුක්තිය පසිඳලීම

At a Transparency International seminar Ivan asked Bribery Commission chairman S. Ananda Coomaraswamy why the commission had cleared Mangala Samaraweera over a Rs. 500,000 credit card from a state body. He contrasts the commission with former commissioner Neelum Gamage, who resisted pressure from President Wijetunga over Wack Silva, and argues that politicians enriched by corruption will never accept an independent commission. A second section criticises the legal community’s belated alarm at Mark Fernando’s early retirement and describes the decay of the judiciary under Sarath N. Silva.

යුක්තිය පසිඳලන ආයතන ක්‍රමයේ බිඳවැටීම

Ivan likens the judiciary to a cancer patient: the President planted the disease by appointing a corrupt Chief Justice and the present government has let it spread. Further sections mark Mark Fernando’s early retirement and his rulings on presidential immunity, a petition by 22 professionals asking the Tyronne Fernando select committee to hear the charges against Sarath N. Silva, rising Muslim unrest in the East and the demand for Muslim police recruits, and a presidential commission on crime that ignores presidents’ own use of criminals.

මංගලගේ බළලා මල්ලෙන් එළියට

Mangala Samaraweera’s call to abolish the executive presidency, Ivan argues, reflects the SLFP’s real aim of making Chandrika Kumaratunga an executive prime minister after her term ends, just as Ranil Wickremesinghe wants the presidency intact for himself. Further sections cover the Elections Commissioner’s criticism of the hastily passed 17th Amendment and of Supreme Court rulings, and the Editors’ Guild submission on contempt of court.