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.
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.
අහෝ පාර්ලිමේන්තුව
Ivan condemns the one-sided procedure by which Parliament’s select committee has pursued Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake. He recalls the 1984 inquiry into Chief Justice Neville Samarakoon, when S. Nadesan argued that Parliament had no lawful procedure for trying a judge, and India’s Judges (Inquiry) Act of 1968, and explains how Parliament gained and then voluntarily gave up judicial power over privilege, citing his own privilege case in 1992. He lists eight faults in the present inquiry, from charges without supporting evidence to no list of witnesses and undue haste, and predicts that the President’s unease will embolden those resisting.
අධිකරණයේ කාර්යභාරය විවේචනාත්මක විමසීමක්
As the clash between the courts and the government intensifies, Ivan defends judges’ right to fight for their independence but asks why Sri Lanka’s judiciary, unlike those of Britain, the United States and India, has not won public respect. He traces how the Supreme Court, fair in colonial times, failed at key moments: allowing the 1982 referendum to extend Parliament’s term, the handling of presidential term limits and crossovers, failing to rescue the 17th Amendment and approving the 18th, and weak orders on election law. The judiciary, he concludes, is paying for its own mistakes.
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.
ශ්රී ලංකාවේ ක්රියාත්මක වන දෝෂාභියෝග ක්රමය (විවේචනාත්මක විශ්ලේෂණයක්)
Ivan compares impeachment procedures in the United States, India, South Africa and Germany, where presidents and senior judges face the same process, with Sri Lanka’s, which makes it almost impossible to remove a president but easy for a parliamentary majority to remove a judge, since the charges against judges are heard by a select committee of MPs under standing orders. That imbalance, he argues, is why presidents need a loyal Supreme Court. Drawing on his own objection in the 1990s to being tried by Parliament for breach of privilege without a lawful procedure, he argues that Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake too is entitled to a fair hearing.
දේශපාලන ක්රමය සමග අධිකරණයේ බිඳ වැටීම
Ivan sees the government’s move to impeach the Chief Justice as part of the collapse of the political system. Comparing the courts of the United States, Britain and India, where the judiciary guards the constitution and the separation of powers, he shows how Sri Lanka’s constitution places the courts under the president, who appoints all senior judges, and limits their review of legislation. He criticises the Supreme Court for failing to be creative, from approving the 1982 referendum that extended Parliament’s life to its handling of the 17th Amendment, and traces the decline back beyond Sarath N. Silva to G.P.S. de Silva’s time.
අධිකරණයේ හා විධායකයේ ගැටුම
After the university teachers, Ivan writes, the stage has been taken by judicial officers and lawyers, provoked by a thug attack on the Secretary of the Judicial Service Commission, who had been publicly criticised by the President. He argues that the 1978 system copied the American presidency without its checks, giving the president power to appoint judges and limiting judicial review. Neville Samarakoon, though appointed as a friend of J.R. Jayewardene, kept the court upright; the retreat came under Sarath N. Silva, whose misconduct his successors never corrected. The judiciary, he warns, cannot defeat the government within this collapsing system.
ඉතිරි කිරීමේ බැංකුවේ කම්බා හොරකම
On the chairman’s orders, the National Savings Bank agreed to buy 13% of The Finance Company for Rs 390 million from four individuals — two of them directors — at about Rs 50 a share when the market price was Rs 30–32 and the real value perhaps under Rs 15, handing them some Rs 140 million. A senior officer alerted the Treasury Secretary and the President and the cheque was stopped, but the sellers were paid through Sampath Bank. The chairman, Pradeep Kariyawasam, is a political appointee and the husband of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, whom the government had placated with state posts for him when it passed her over for Asoka de Silva. Ivan warns that the case cannot be handled fairly, recalls how Sarath N. Silva destroyed the judiciary’s standing, and says no ethnic solution matters without a trustworthy judiciary.
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.