| by A
Political Soothsayer
( January
01, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Under normal course of events, as anticipated
earlier, what in store for Sri Lanka in 2013 were the promised elections for
the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) in September and the Commonwealth Heads
of Government Meeting (CHGOM) in November. Until then the country was supposed
to lumber on grudgingly though as usual, perhaps making some headway here and
debacle there, as it always did, amusing the disparaging critics home and the
international community abroad. Not even a major cricket event was supposed to
take place in this resplendent island, to take the excess heat out of the
masses, irrespective of the ICC women’s cricket tournament taking place in many
other countries in June.
 |
In that even it is most likely, according to my reading of the political Oracle, the President will dissolve Parliament and go for premature Parliamentary elections in the near future however after removing the Chief Justice.
Of course
the government was scheduled to face the next music in March at the UN Human
Rights Commission (UNHRC) in Geneva and even that was not considered to be of catastrophic
proportions if not for the current blundering in the impeachment effort or the
unwarranted harassment of the university students at the Jaffna Campus. Anyway,
the government media or even the Ministers were always ready to say completely
the opposite of what would happen in Geneva as if the Sri Lankan masses are
like the ‘old school Chinese’ (konde
bandapu cheennu). No insult to China or the Chinese is intended. Remember, the
Professor was saying last time that Sri Lanka just lost the vote only by one,
conveniently counting those who abstained from voting to our side! By that
magic, 15 became 23.
Our
politicians in power and their cohorts however are extremely an erratic lot.
They are not easily predictable and if they don’t have an enemy to fight
against then they would create one. They love to indulge in ‘shadow boxing’
against imperialism and see foreign agents in every nook and corner. What they
most cherish is unleashing their thugs, official and unofficial, against their
enemies particularly during election times. Even they are capable of biting noses
or ears of the enemy. Unfortunately after the conclusion of the three
provincial council elections in September 2012 for Sabaragamuwa, North Central
and the Eastern, there was no exciting event that they could get involved in. There
was no entertainment for the spectators either. The official TV shows on ITN
and Repuavahini were getting extremely boring. Their voices were running ‘hoarse’
strangely this time for not being used against their enemies. Their paid trishaw
thugs were not used for a long time and they were complaining being out of extra
cash.
Finally
finally they have found an enemy to fix all of these; this time around quite an
extraordinary woman. Perhaps they thought it would be an easy prey judging from
their own experiences at home or in their electorates. But she was the Chief
Justice. She was just appointed for the big position by the big boss. Never
mind she has proved to be ‘too big for the shoes’ given by the boss. She was
not just a CJ but an internationally recognized academic in the field of law. The
modus operandi of the struggle
against the new enemy was the much maligned Impeachment in the Sri Lankan
context. No previous effort on Impeachment had been successful after three
attempts. They hardly understood what it involved but they had advisors from
the same profession including the previous CJ and the previous previous one,
reputed for Kekille judgements,
giving unofficial advice on the sidelines.
The single
enemy soon became the whole of the judiciary and all the ‘black coats’ also rallied
round her for one or the other reason, reputed for their Hultsdorf mentality. All
international conspirators, from the International Bar Association to the UN
Special Rapporteur on Independence of the Judges and the Lawyers came in
support of her. The Canadian Prime Minister, quite an imperialist one
supporting the terrorists, threatened to boycott the scheduled CHOGM in
November if the Impeachment against the CJ goes ahead. But the US and India
were quite silent perhaps because the Rajapaksas are the buddies of the awaken
giant of China.
They decided
to conduct the Impeachment in the Gang-nam style and framed quite a long list
of 14 charges believing more the charges are more the possibility of proving
them. They appointed carefully selected seven known rogues (two buffoons included)
to the Impeachment Court named respectfully as a Parliamentary Select
Committee, all according to their own constitution but not the country’s one.
All objections from the Judiciary or the lawyers of the CJ or the opposition
members of the PSC were summarily dismissed. Within few days they were however got
exhausted. ‘Why would we investigate all the charges, three would be good
enough,’ they thought. Some of the journalists who sing weekly hosannas to the
regime thought some ‘unproven charges’ are more profound than the ‘proven once’
for the necessary character assassination. In the meanwhile, the CJ, the
lawyers and the opposition members left the proceedings quite unable to stomach
the ‘parliamentary language’ of two of the buffoons in the kangaroo courts. With
this happening, they were suddenly elated of the prospects of proving the
charges in absentia and called open even some witnesses to the Diyawanna
Wallawa where the proceedings were taking place. They had a marathon session in
that Friday evening, quite a Guinness record, and produced their report on the
following morning. They said that they investigated five charges and three were
proved without objection.
Lo and
behold! In the meanwhile, the cunning lady has applied for a Writ of Certiorari
at the Court of Appeal. Then the big boss said his conscience was pricked and announced
that he would appoint ‘another independent committee’ to review the report of
the PSC before taking a final decision on the Impeachment. But later he
unceremoniously retracted the pronouncement, as usual, in his style of dubious governance.
Then some of the court jesters said that the CJ has appointed her own bench to
hear her appeal without knowing the difference between the Supreme Court and
the Court of Appeal. Perhaps it is more likely that they thought the people in
the country would not know the difference.
To make the
long story short, the first surprise in the New Year of 2013 would be the
ruling of the Court of Appeal on the Impeachment proceedings against the
country’s Chief Justice. As a bigwig on legal matters of yesteryears, Dr Nihal
Jayawickrama, has said, “If the Court were to quash
the findings of the Select Committee, that would be a binding and authoritative
judgment on the matter.” If the Parliament or the President were to ignore the
court ruling and proceed with removing the Chief Justice it would create a very
serious constitutional crisis with considerable international implications. This
is at the brink of the UNHRC sessions in Geneva in March.
In that even it is most likely, according to my
reading of the political Oracle, the President will dissolve Parliament and go
for premature Parliamentary elections in the near future however after removing
the Chief Justice.
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