කපුවා කපෝති ද?
Three notes. Mangala Samaraweera, who brought the President and the JVP together and taught the JVP that it could capture the SLFP after Chandrika, now faces the collapse of his work; the Hela Urumaya’s crocodile tears for Major Muthaliff; and the Lankadeepa editor Siri Ranasinghe’s apology to the Supreme Court over the UNP statement.
පරා වළල්ලක් වෙන්නට යන ටෝනිගේ නඩු තීන්දුව
The Human Rights Committee’s ruling against Sri Lanka over the one-year sentence imposed on Tony Fernando shows how the Supreme Court’s high-handed policy flouted law and natural justice. A Chief Justice with any shame would resign; Ivan notes that the fourteen-member committee included India’s P.N. Bhagwati.
අධිකරණ අපහාසය සහ “ලංකාදීප” කර්තෘ
MPs cannot change parties without losing their seats, yet none who crossed to the government has lost his. The editorial observes that the Chief Justice’s closest friends suffer most from his political theatre, and argues that Siri Ranasinghe committed no offence by publishing the UNP’s statement criticising the Bogollagama judgment.
නීතිඥ සංගම් නිලවරණ ප්රතිඵලය: අගවිනිසුරුට එරෙහි ව ඉදිරිපත් වූ විශ්වාසභංගයකි
Though only lawyers voted, the Bar Association election was as important as a general election, because the Supreme Court had become the centre of political power. The editorial reads Desmond Fernando’s late entry and victory over the Chief Justice’s trusted ally as a vote of no confidence in Sarath N. Silva.
අනුරගේ අපහාසය
Contempt complaints are becoming fashionable: UNP MP Johnston Fernando has petitioned the Supreme Court over Anura Bandaranaike’s remarks on the S.B. Dissanayake case. The note points out that the UNP leader decries contempt prosecutions while his own MP files one.
එස්.බී.ට ඇණ ගැසීම
The opposition condemns the Supreme Court’s judgment against S.B. Dissanayake with one voice and the government party praises it with one voice, while the JVP claims to be different. The editorial traces S.B.’s journey from PA ‘hero’ to UNP ‘traitor’ and insists that the public has the right to criticise a court that acts as a political instrument.
වංචාවක් සිදුවීද?
The biggest question raised by the judgment that sent S.B. Dissanayake to prison is whether the Chief Justice deceived him: the evidence suggests S.B. dropped his legal challenge on a promise he never doubted. If so, the editorial asks, how should such a deception be dealt with, and did the other judges know?
අපරාධය හා දඬුවම
S.B. Dissanayake went to court on the 14th expecting a suspended sentence and went to prison. Ivan recalls meeting him with Nihal Jayawickrama in November and warning him that, compared with Rauff Hakeem or the Hela Urumaya monks, he mattered little to the Chief Justice, and describes how S.B. walked into the trap of his own accord.
එස්.බී. ට එරෙහිව දෙන ලද දඬුවම
S.B. Dissanayake, UNP national organiser, has been convicted of contempt of court. Although he once threatened to close the courts to push through the People’s Alliance constitution, the editorial argues that two years’ rigorous imprisonment for such an offence would be unjust even from an independent court, and that the law of contempt must be read as it is in the modern world.
“දි කිරට කියන බළල් සාක්ෂියක්”: අගවිනිසුරු සහ “දිවයින”
The Sunday Divaina ran a full-page interview with the Chief Justice, conducted by a writer who had earlier defended the Public Trustee. The piece asks why the interview appeared while an estate case involving the paper’s owners was pending before a bench on which the Chief Justice always sat, and whether a judge may use a litigant’s newspaper as his shield.