Judgment Day(s)!

 By kassapa

News from the courthouses dominate headlines these days. On the one hand, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court is hearing some sixty-seven petitions relating to the proposed 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, most of them being opposed to the amendment. On the other hand, opposition politicians are being either arrested or sentenced for their errors of commission when they were in power.

With regard to the proposed 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, the collective demand of opposition political parties and the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) to have the petitions heard by a full (or fuller) bench of the Supreme Court has been turned down. A five-judge bench is now hearing the petitions.

That does not by any means spell doom for the petitioners. However, the manner in which both the opposition and the BASL went about the task of opposing the amendments probably didn’t endear them to the highest court in the land. They made their opposition very much a personal crusade against incumbent Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena.

When anonymous websites and YouTube channels published false and unsubstantiated material against the Chief Justice, opposition Members of Parliament repeated them in the House (not outside it, lest they be charged with defamation or contempt of court) as if it were the gospel truth, knowing very well that sitting judges have no recourse to respond to such allegations.

Worse still was the conduct of the BASL. The Association, which issued scathing statements when social media questioned the integrity of Attorney General Parinda Ranasinghe, maintained a deafening silence when the Chief Justice was being lampooned and lambasted. When pressed for an opinion about this, all BASL President Rajeev Amarasuriya could mumble was that he himself was the victim of much mud-slinging. Pardon me, my learned friend, you are still not quite in the league of the Chief Justice- and probably never will be! The BASL did issue a watered-down statement when these double standards were questioned publicly but by then, it was too little, too late.

The opposition meanwhile has made the issue of the proposed 22nd Amendment the most prominent issue on its political agenda. In doing so, they are making two crucial miscalculations. Firstly, they are assuming that this is a burning issue for the average Sri Lankan. It is not. The ‘ordinary’ citizen is more concerned about the cost of living or the state of the health services or the transport sector much more than they are about whether Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena continues in office for two more years.

Previous governments have engaged in enacting constitutional amendments that are blatantly designed for specific purposes or identified individuals. The amendment that allowed Mahinda Rajapaksa to run for a third term office and the amendment that brought Basil Rajapaksa back into Parliament are cases in point. Opposition parties, even then, did cry foul. That cry resonated with the masses more. The proposed 22nd Amendment will not attract public disapproval in the same manner.

The other miscalculation the opposition is making is assuming that even among those for whom the 22nd Amendment arouses interest, believing that the majority among them oppose the amendment. This needs to be seen in the context of the current framework of administering justice.

After years of stagnation, politicians who believed they were well above the law are being prosecuted both by the Attorney General’s Department and the Commission Investigating Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC). Some- such as Mahindananda Aluthgamage and S. M. Ranjith- have been jailed. Others such as Keheliya Rambukwella have had their reputations irreparably tarnished.

Just this week, former Aviation Minister in the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna Cabinet, Piyankara Jayaratne was sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for causing a loss of about Rs.300,000 to the state. Meanwhile, former Education Minister in the so-called ‘yahapalanaya’ government, Akila Viraj Kariyawasam is facing similar charges for employing persons in a petrol shed, while having their salaries paid for by the Presidential Secretariat where Kariyawasam functioned as an ‘advisor’ to stand-in President Ranil Wickremesinghe. This was while the country was in the throes of an economic crisis.

Following the same pattern is Ravi Karunanayake, the ‘yahapalanaya’ government’s first Finance Minister. CIABOC this week alleged in court that Karunanayake had persons who were working for him on the payroll of the National Lotteries Board. Karunanayake had to suffer the ignominy of being arrested but, unlike Kariyawasam, was fortunate enough to be bailed on the same day.

What is being exposed here is the thread of corruption that had been intrinsically woven into the fabric of our society. The offences that these politicians- with the exception of Rambukwella- have been charged with are not on the scale of multi-million rupees. They are, in effect, ‘petty thefts’ from the coffers of the state. They have become easy to prove to prosecutors, because they were indulged in with such impunity that the perpetrators didn’t even bother to cover their tracks, because the amounts involved were relatively less.

When each of these cases are reported in the media and the spectacle of opposition politicians being arrested or sentenced is seen by millions of people, it sends a quiet but firm message to the public: at long last, the law does not appear to be a respecter of persons, it is being equally applied to all and everyone- even former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, for instance. They are being held responsible for what they did. This is new to the average citizen and they like it.

In such a context, the opposition trying to inform the public that increasing the retirement age of superior court judges, as well as all other grades of judicial officers by two years is undemocratic doesn’t sound convincing at all. In fact, it sounds as if the opposition is trying to flee from justice which is finally catching up with them after years of immunity and impunity. In the unlikely event that the Supreme Court orders a referendum on the 22nd Amendment, it will be approved by the people overwhelmingly. This is what the opposition does not realise.

The proposed 22nd Amendment will likely become a landmark amendment. It should never have been. The opposition has generated much ado about nothing and the end result will not be to their liking.