Make The Impeachment Boomerang On The Rajapaksas
The impeachment of the Chief Justice is neither the beginning nor the end of theRajapaksa-rush towards absolutism. But it does constitute a watershed moment in that journey, perhaps its final really-existing breaking-point.
Whether the impeachment boomerangs on the Rajapaksas or scythes Lankan democracy depends on how the judiciary, polity and society, including the non-SLFP parties in the UPFA, respond to it.
The Rajapaksas are determined to get rid of the CJ, because she has begun to block their way and cramp their style. Impeachment is the only possible solution to the Rajapaksa conundrum that is judicial independence – since doing to a chief justice what was done to Lasantha Wickremetunga or Prageeth Ekneligoda is not tenable….yet.
A pinprick of light still prevails in this gathering Cimmerian darkness. By going for the impeachment in such a ham-fisted fashion, the Rajapaksas have overplayed their hand. Handled properly, the impeachment can be used to de-legitimise the regime nationally and internationally, and impose a strategic wound on the Rajapaksa project.
The impeachment can be made to boomerang on the Siblings, if the CJ continues to stand firm and our customary indifference does not condemn her to wage this national battle alone.
The impeachment is a mark of Rajapaksa hubris; it is a result of Rajapaksa-numerical strength and of Rajapaksa-political weakness. It denotes a break in the Rajapaksa’s Southern hegemony. The impeachment is symbolic and symbiotic of the Siblings’ inability to do to the judiciary what they did, with such terrifying success, to the legislature, the army, the bureaucracy and the SLFP. All those entities succumbed to that particular Rajapaksa concoction of threats and rewards, snarls and smiles, with nary a murmur. Until a few months ago, the judiciary seemed to be headed in the same anti-democratic direction; and the Rajapaksa power-project seemed totally unassailable.
The Rajapaksas do not want a chief justice who will cooperate with them some of the time, on some of the issues (as Shirani Bandaranaike indeed did). The Rajapaksas want a chief justice who will do their bidding, unquestioningly, on all the issues, all the time. The Rajapaksas want a chief justice no different from the fawning ministers/parliamentarians, the subjugated military-bosses and the supine bureaucrats, the sort of mindless underling they have become accustomed to.
Why the judiciary in general and the CJ in particular decided to resist Rajapaksa tyranny is for historians to debate. For us today it suffices that they are doing so. The judiciary, led by the CJ, is fighting to prevent itself from becoming another pillar of Rajapaksa power. They cannot win that necessary battle without the backing of all those who value the rule of law and understand that tyranny becomes destiny only through default.
