Overcoming ideological anarchy
Mao on falling into pits. Victor Ivan argues that neither the protesters nor the opposition parties who borrowed their slogan have worked out whether it can actually be done.
President Chandrika and former Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayke
Chandrika Kumaratunga launches her memoir and Shirani Bandaranayake gives the keynote. Victor Ivan, who wrote a book about Chandrika, listens to the speech and sets the record against it.
19 වැනි සංශෝධන කෙටුම්පත ගැන
Ivan welcomes the campaign by Maduluwawe Sobitha’s National Movement for a Just Society to abolish the executive presidency, but argues its draft Nineteenth Amendment is a concept paper with a narrow vision. Every Sri Lankan constitution, and Chandrika Kumaratunga’s 2000 draft, was made by cunning or majority power rather than on the sovereignty of the people, as India and South Africa did. The draft ignores the unresolved question of who belongs to the nation, copies the flawed Constitutional Council of the Seventeenth Amendment, and keeps a simple-majority impeachment of judges.
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.
නීතියක් නැති රටකට!
With the impeachment of the Chief Justice reaching its climax, the paper sets aside ordinary reporting to list, in twelve numbered points, the consequences of pressing ahead in defiance of rulings by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. It rejects the government’s comparisons with the Philippines and Westminster, warns that a new Chief Justice installed over a lawfully protected one would bring repression and chaos into the courts, and predicts damage as grave as the 1982 referendum and Black July.
අවිචාරය, උද්ධච්චකම හා අශීලාචාරත්වය
Ivan argues that by ignoring the judgments of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal in the impeachment of the Chief Justice, the government has done what no previous government dared, destroying both the courts’ legitimacy and its own. He traces the Supreme Court’s power to interpret the constitution and the ancient reach of the writ jurisdiction, recalls the Bracegirdle case under colonial rule and Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s certiorari against J.R. Jayewardene’s commission, and warns, with Musharraf’s Pakistan as the precedent, that two rival Chief Justices could now follow.
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.
සරත් නන්ද සිල්වාගේ ක්රියාකාරකම් සොයා බැලීම
The select committee the government means to appoint to inquire into the improper acts done while Sarath N. Silva held the office of chief justice has become a subject of argument, and the first man to challenge it is Sarath N. Silva. He says appointing one two years after his retirement is an act of revenge, and that such a committee could damage judicial independence.
සරත් සිල්වා හා තේරීම් කාරක සභාව
The papers report that the government has decided to appoint a parliamentary select committee to look into the wrongs done in the judiciary during Sarath N. Silva’s time as chief justice. He says it is being done to suppress the fight he is now carrying on against the government’s corruption, and that since he is a retired citizen the government has no power to appoint a committee to inquire into him.
විධායක ජනාධිපති ක්රමය අවශ්ය නම් එය ප්රතිසංවිධානය කළ යුතුය
A change to the system can only be had if government and opposition both want it for its own sake rather than as a way of unseating each other. Ivan sets the American presidency against the Sri Lankan one point by point — an electoral college rather than a direct vote, no power to dissolve the legislature or to call an early election, an impeachment that can actually remove — and argues that ours was written so that none of those checks bite.