Exorcise the evil system
Sri Lanka signed the United Nations convention against inhuman and degrading treatment in January 1994 and passed an Act to give effect to it in November of the same year. What has happened since to the people the Act was written for is the subject of the column.
Government in extremely delicate position
The PA government seems to be trying to cover up all its sins through peace talks. Meanwhile the conditions for a democratic political culture — an independent elections commission first among them — are being deferred until a new constitution that may never come.
A wake up call to main opposition
The opposition transacts with this government the way a serf transacts with his feudal lord. The serf’s manner before his master is timid: he could not protest even when his wife or his daughter was taken. Timid talk about four commissions will not revive a decaying democracy.
Will democracy survive at crucial elections?
For democratic politics this parliamentary election will be decisive: whatever democratic freedom is left depends on how it comes out. The Elections Commissioner means to act forcefully and the EU observers are working more systematically than before — and it remains to be seen whether that is enough.
Judging the independence of the Judiciary
An independent judiciary is a precondition for the survival of a democracy. Sovereign power lies with the people, and it is the courts’ responsibility not to permit laws that reduce it. The test applied here is how the bench was constituted to examine the Seventeenth Amendment.
What happened to the Wayamba Election?
All the Wayamba election petitions were dismissed at the stage of preliminary objections, on the ground that they had not specified how the corruption, the intimidation and the prevention of voting had affected the result. What the petitions actually contained, station by station, is set out here.
A society without a conscience
What Sri Lanka faces is a crisis of conscience. The things that separate a man from an animal are the ability to think independently and the conscience — and the organisations that exist to exercise both have gone quiet at exactly the moments they were needed.
Prabhakaran is not our only threat
An answer to the problem of Prabhakaran can be found only if the collapse running through the whole political system can be stopped and the country’s political spirit revived by a successful reform. The threat named in the headline is not the one the country talks about.
Executive Gobbles up Judiciary
Why did the President, against every accepted norm of morality, appoint Sarath N. Silva to the vacant post of Chief Justice at a time when very serious allegations against him were being inquired into before the Supreme Court? And how will that act work on society and on politics?
Dishonourable acts taint an ‘honourable’ judicial service
The questions raised about the Judicial Service by the conduct of Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake, District Judge Upali Abeyratne and Attorney General Sarath N. Silva — three men at three different levels of it — are serious indeed.