Mrs. B & Shirani B: How Male Politicians Could Get Rid Of Them
Mrs. B & Shirani B: How male politicians could get rid of them and get away with it is part of the story
of sixty five years of independence 
Rajan Philips
There are similarities and continuities between the impeachment and banishment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake from the Supreme Court and the disenfranchisement of Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike and her banishment from Parliament more than thirty years earlier. The obvious common ground is that Sri Lanka’s male politicians managed to get rid of two women at the highest levels in public life by foul means. First, it was the world’s first female Prime Minister, and now it is Sri Lanka’s first female Chief Justice. Women could justifiably say that hell hath no fury like Sri Lankan male Presidents scorned!
It is not my purpose to compare and contrast the two banishments, but to see if we could understand how Sri Lanka as a society and a polity could have come to allow these almost unique banishments which hardly have a parallel in any other country. At the social level, it is not difficult to see the hand of patriarchy at work. It is not a coincidence that the first political leader and the first Chief Justice to be disposed of by an Act of Parliament and a presidential order were women. It is inconceivable that men would have acted so cavalierly against fellow men.
Mrs. Bandaranaike entered politics as a residual heir (i.e. the absence of a male successor, presaging similar residual successions in other South Asian countries) but she soon established herself as a political leader in her own right. Shirani Bandaranayake climbed her way to the top through the hard work of professional education and accreditation. Although her appointment from academia to the Supreme Court was unusual in Sri Lanka, it is not uncommon at all in many other countries with successful, competent and independent judiciaries.
Remember also the old, not necessarily accurate, adage that only bad lawyers end up on the bench! The appointments to superior courts typically come from career judges and practising lawyers. The system worked in Sri Lanka and elsewhere because, as long as the really bad lawyers were not appointed as judges, the better lawyers who were not appointed to the bench could go on with their careers amassing wealth and fame all the while. Quite a few of them would politely decline a judicial appointment. During British colonial rule before most of us were born, a famous Madras Tamil Brahmin lawyer and a man of great prominence and influence in all of India, Sir CP Ramaswamy Iyer, declined his nomination to the bench saying that he would “rather speak nonsense for few hours a day than hear nonsense all day long!” The wag would add that the fees for speaking nonsense have always been considerably higher than the salary for hearing it.
Historically, about a third of the US Supreme Court judges have had no law degrees, but that was mostly in the 19th century and it is unthinkable now with the informal but institutionalized involvement of the American Bar Association in the ranking of judicial nominees for presidential selection. The Sri Lankan government deliberately bypassed another opportunity to establish a proper process for identifying, ranking and selecting superior court judges. Instead, it has made arbitrary firing and hiring of judges a constitutional routine. One of the reasons for establishing Labour Tribunals separate from the courts more than 50 years ago in Sri Lanka was the class prejudice of judges against workers. Now Sri Lankan judges may have better luck at a Labour Tribunal than in their own courts, subject of course to future Standing Orders.
Patriarchy and phallic sovereignty Read More
Rajiv case reprieve may have spurred secrecy
CHENNAI, February 10, 2013
The government acted swiftly to carry out the
execution of Afzal Guru a mere six days after his mercy petition was rejected by
President Pranab Mukherjee on February 3.
It showed similar swiftness and secrecy in the case of Ajmal Kasab
too. This is perhaps explained by its experience of seeing the three death row
convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case obtain a stay on the execution
after news of the rejection of their mercy petition was made public. Murugan,
Santhan and Perarivalan, sentenced to death for plotting to kill Rajiv in May
1991, were informed by a letter dated August 12, 2011 that the President had
rejected their mercy petitions. Thereafter, the authorities fixed the date of
hanging as September 9 that year. This information gave them vital time to
challenge the prolonged delay — 11 years and four months, to be exact — in the
disposal of their mercy petitions.
News that the mercy petitions had been rejected caused a political
outcry in Tamil Nadu, and the Assembly adopted a resolution on August 30
recommending that their death sentences be commuted to life terms. The High
Court admitted their petitions the same day and stayed their execution.
Subsequently, the Supreme Court itself decided to hear these petitions and the
matter is still pending there.
The sequence of events in Afzal Guru’s case, as given by Union Home
Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, does not indicate whether he was informed of the
President’s order rejecting his mercy plea. “We sent it to the President on
January 21, 2013. On February 3, the President sent Guru’s file rejecting the
mercy plea to the Home Ministry.
I put my signature on February 4 and sent it for further execution to
the department. The due procedure was followed and it was then decided that the
hanging will take place on February 9 [on Saturday] at 8 a.m.”
