Betrayal of the nation
Going to Geneva is called treachery in Sri Lanka. Victor Ivan, who did it and won, sets out the Tony Fernando case and the judgment Parliament could reverse tomorrow if it chose to.
Perfecting the failure
Gotabaya is failing, Victor Ivan writes, but so is the state he inherited. The column ends on the case of Shani Abeysekera and what happens to a country when its courts stop administering justice.
සරත් සිල්වා ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Ceylon Today did not print his reply uncut as promised, Ivan says, and the media that now present Sarath N. Silva as a saviour include owners who won judgments from him when he needed their support. Silva, once slated as the common opposition candidate, still poses as a reformer. Ivan contrasts Justice Mark Fernando’s rulings, which forced the only free and fair election since 1977, with Silva’s court, which turned away election petitioners. Four of six UN Human Rights Committee findings against Sri Lanka concern Silva’s judgments, among them S.B. Dissanayake’s and Tony Fernando’s, jailed for contempt after petitioning a bench Silva himself led.
චෝගම් ආශ්රයෙන් උගත හැකි පාඩම්
CHOGM exposed the depth of Sri Lanka’s crisis, Ivan argues: foreign lawyers were refused visas for a Bar Association event, when Param Cumaraswamy had once come freely to criticise the judiciary. The government cannot investigate war-time abuses because it fears the armed forces it now leans on, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa would not welcome it. Every insurrection and its suppression was brutal; Ivan judges the army’s conduct against the LTTE less savage than in 1989 and rejects the 40,000 figure, yet accepts crimes such as the Trincomalee killings. Sirimavo Bandaranaike prosecuted Premawathie Manamperi’s killers; Mahinda Rajapaksa has shown no such courage.
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.
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.
හිටපු අගවිනිසුරු සහ ජීඑස්පී ප්ලස් සහනය
The EU has suspended Sri Lanka’s GSP Plus concession, worth 78 million euros in 2008 against exports of 1.24 billion. Government, exporters and commentators alike have forgotten what caused it: two rulings by former Chief Justice Sarath Nanda Silva, the same man now lecturing the country on international law. Under the ICCPR, citizens could petition the UN Human Rights Committee where the highest court failed them, and most complaints heard concerned Silva’s own conduct — among them Tony Emmanuel Fernando, jailed a year for contempt on a false charge after suing over withheld case records, and assaulted in prison the day he was committed. Silva also barred a work-to-rule at the port, which the ILO found breached its convention, and then disparaged that convention in open court with an ILO representative present. Correcting those two wrongs would be enough to recover the concession.
පරා වළල්ලක් වෙන්නට යන ටෝනිගේ නඩු තීන්දුව
The Human Rights Committee’s ruling against Sri Lanka over the one-year sentence imposed on Tony Fernando shows how the Supreme Court’s high-handed policy flouted law and natural justice. A Chief Justice with any shame would resign; Ivan notes that the fourteen-member committee included India’s P.N. Bhagwati.
ශිෂ්ට සම්පන්න භාවයේ තරම
The Human Rights Committee has ruled against Sri Lanka again, this time over Nallaratnam Singarasa, jailed for 35 years under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, while Tony Fernando’s case is pending. Ivan holds President Kumaratunga responsible for appointing Sarath N. Silva as Chief Justice, and Ranil Wickremesinghe for allowing the system to take root.
පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට ඇස් නොපෙනේද?
Parliament has the final responsibility for the country’s course, yet it will not even look at a case in which a citizen who sued the Chief Justice and members of the Judicial Service Commission was tried by a bench that included a respondent. Parliament should not meddle with the courts, the editorial says, but it must correct a judiciary that has stopped behaving in a civilised way.