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.
Queen of Deceit Found Guilty
On 8 October 2008 the Supreme Court returned to the UDA 224 acres vested in Asia Golf Company under former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, the Waters Edge case. Ivan uses the judgment to set out how the political system pays supporters and financiers out of public property, and argues that it establishes a public-trust principle future presidents must heed.
The Travails of School and Free Education
The dispute over admissions to grade one sets the Supreme Court against the Education Ministry and Parliament. Ivan follows the fundamental rights petitions, the court’s own marking guidelines, Ranil Wickremesinghe’s privilege complaint and the part played by past pupils’ associations, and warns that the result will leave admissions in lasting disorder.
Whither Justice?
A retired army commander and a respected engineer petitioned the Supreme Court over judicial appointments made without constitutional council approval. Victor Ivan records what happened: a bench including the Chief Justice heard the petition and then directed the Attorney General to establish whether the petitioners had abused the judiciary by bringing it. The message, as he reads it, is that nothing the President does may be questioned, and that asking is itself an offence. Neither man belonged to the UNP or sought party advantage; they went to the last place open to a citizen with a grievance about governance. The Court’s first duty is to defend the constitution against an executive assuming powers it does not have, and by making the protection of the President its duty instead it has annulled the constitution without replacing it — leaving the country, Ivan writes, with no fundamental law at all. Similar cases from the Organization of Professional Associations and the People’s Movement for Good Governance have met the same immunity ruling. What strikes him most is who is fighting: citizens who know they will lose, while the UNP, the JVP and the Jathika Hela Urumaya say nothing and parliament will not even debate it. A judiciary that abandons its supervision of the executive, he concludes, brings the country closer to Prabhakaran’s Reich, where no authority may investigate Prabhakaran.
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.
අධිකරණ තීන්දුවෙන් පසු: ඊළගට විය හැක්කේ කුමක්ද?
The Chief Justice’s only way out of a great crisis over the election year was to rule for 2005, ending the President’s dream of staying until 2006, though she still has cards to play. Ivan warns that the country is caught in a cycle of political violence and that the killings must be controlled even as attention turns to the election.
ජනාධිපතිවරණ ප්රහේළිකාව
The Elections Commissioner has the constitutional power to fix the date and has already decided, but the Supreme Court’s view is unclear. The editorial argues that the oath the President took publicly on 22 December 1999 should be accepted, so that her term ends on 22 December 2005, and notes that the Chief Justice will be the saddest when it does.
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.
සුනාමි නඩුව
Martin Luther King could look to the US Supreme Court with hope; Prabhakaran and Tamils cannot feel the same about Sri Lanka’s. Ivan recalls the Tamil rights cases that failed, from the Kodakan Pillai citizenship case onwards, then describes the hearing of the petitions against the tsunami mechanism, noting a special guest linked to the Chief Justice’s Diyawanna Oya affair.
ජවිපෙ මල්ලිලා හා අගවිනිසුරු
The Chief Justice took up the JVP’s and the Hela Urumaya’s fundamental rights petitions against the tsunami management structure filed on 5 July. A second note, ‘S.B. cries for freedom’, finds S.B. Dissanayake in the Merchant ward expecting release at any moment and blaming Bribery Commission Director-General Piyasena Ranasinghe for his troubles.