Impeaching Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice: A primer

Impeaching Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice: A primer

Image courtesy Read Sri Lanka

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[Editors note: The Supreme Court ruling on the Divineguma Bill presented to Parliament just before this article was published noted that the Bill has to be passed with 2/3rd majority in Parliament and that Clause 8 has to be approved at a referendum. See original tweet by Daily Mirror here.]

The current battle between the Judiciary and the Executive/Legislative, culminating in the ongoing attempt by the government to impeach the Chief Justice, has received a lot of attention in the traditional media, and on Facebook and Twitter. People who don’t usually bother keeping abreast of the goings on in the country have been activated enough to post messages and share articles on FB. However, most of them don’t seem to be aware of the context to this crisis and how it has developed in relation to two other important current issues, the Divi Neguma Bill and the debate about the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Here’s my layman’s attempt to make sense of this issue and to link up the three issues.

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