යුක්තියේ දෙවොල ගිනි ගැනීම
Harold Laski said a country’s courts measure the civility of its politics. Ivan applies the yardstick and finds it unbearable: politicians who do wrong can at least be voted out, but judges are appointed, and he describes valuable timber confiscated by the courts passed to a friendly monk who sold it and built the chief justice an air-conditioned house.
හිටපු අගවිනිසුරු විත්තිකරුවකු වීම
Revision applications against the retired chief justice’s judgments are beginning to queue at the Supreme Court, and Ivan expects the queue to lengthen — though the poor who were punished without even a charge sheet are not in it. He argues that since the Supreme Court is the last place an error can be corrected, it is the institution that most needs to be under continuous scrutiny.
අගවිනිසුරුට ප්රීතිමත් විශ්රාම ජීවිතයකට සුබ පැතුම්
Continuing the previous week, Ivan asks what a review of Sarath N. Silva’s judgments would
find, and answers with the record of appointments, plunder of public property, the company
he kept and the ambition to become head of state. He reports the meeting at which senior
counsel advised Chandrika Kumaratunga against appointing him — and Aloy Ratnayake’s
prediction that one day he would turn on her — and closes with the long list of lawyers and
judges who signed against him.
විශ්රාම යන අගවිනිසුරුතුමෙනි. ඔබට ආයුබෝවන්
On the retirement of Sarath N. Silva, Ivan sets out the record: cases of relatives heard and
relieved, enemies punished to the limit, orders issued to the executive and the legislature,
and an injunction obtained against the Speaker through friendly counsel and a friendly bench
to stop an impeachment reaching the House. He goes back to the district court case brought
by a chemical engineer over the judge’s relationship with his wife, and to the officer
promoted before his punishment had expired.
Can the Political System be changed by way of Court Orders?
The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva now rules against the executive, and the public is pleased. Ivan sets this against the court’s record — the stay order on the impeachment motion, the JSC petition, and five years of turning away petitions to implement the 17th Amendment before Sumanasiri Liyanage’s succeeded — and argues that only changing the political system will last.
අධිකරණයේ විනිසුරුවරුන්ට ආචාර ධර්ම පද්ධතියක්
The Bar Association has appointed a former Chief Justice and two retired Supreme Court judges to draft a code of ethics for judges. The editorial welcomes it, but says the judiciary’s indecency flows from the Chief Justice himself, and that the law must be enforced against him if the trend is to be reversed.
ජනාධිපතිනියට ද කොකා පෙන්නුවේය
At last week’s Cabinet meeting the President reportedly accused the Prime Minister of conspiring with the Chief Justice to bring the election forward to 2005 and bury the tsunami-funds inquiry against him. Ivan observes that, as ticks leave a dying dog, parasites abandon a failing leader, and shows how the Chief Justice took up a petition to block the interpretation she had sought.
අගවිනිසුරු කරණම
The Chief Justice is playing a political conjuror. Ivan argues that the crisis over the election year was his own creation, from the circumstances of the President’s first public swearing-in after the bomb attack to the story of a second oath, invented to stretch her term by a year, and shows how the aim shifted along the way.
අගවිනිසුරු අන්තෝ ජටා බහි ජටා තත්ත්වයක
The question of whether the presidential election falls this year or next has become a legal knot. Fearing the Elections Commissioner’s decision, the President sought the Supreme Court’s interpretation, while Omalpe Sobhitha Thera petitioned to stop it; whatever the Chief Justice decides will anger one side.
අගවිනිසුරුගේ මාළු බෑම
The latest fish on the Chief Justice’s hook is the ‘red fish’, the JVP. The note describes how he baits each hook to the taste of the fish he means to catch, and suggests even the revolutionary Wimal Weerawansa could not resist the charms of the ‘mermaid’ on the mobile phone.