Economics Of Impeaching Chief Justice In The Absence Of The Opposition
Kusal Perera
She’s abused, says the media. That was all some parakeets could do. She,Chief Justice walks out and that’s all she could do, as well. The UNP members in the PSC says, the CJ should be given a fair chance and be persuaded to attend PSC sittings, stressing they will stay on and fight to the end. The “end” was decided before the beginning. It was for that, the PSC was appointed by this regime with a 7 to 4 margin and not with a single vote majority of 6 to 5.
We now begin the ascendency to the next ugly phase of Executive power strengthened through the 18 Amendment to the Constitution (for now, lets not discuss Justice Shirani Bandaranayake’s hand in it) and that of economics under this regime. This for me therefore is no narrow issue of saving or cleaning the CJ. It is for me a much broader political issue of contradictions within the system created to develop a free market economy through political patronage. A situation where answers are sought for the inherent contradictions within their system in continuing with the free market. Of course with not just political patronage, but with political partaking. A revised system that allows more powers, unquestioned in any forum. Some in fact marvelled at the arrogance of this regime in impeaching the CJ while the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on Sri Lanka was on.
From the side of the regime, by 27 November, there was some justification, or rather, some explanation on why the CJ was impeached. In a neither official nor unofficial media intervention, a spokesperson for the Presidential Secretariat suggested that the CJ and her husband acted improperly, contravening legislative regulations. Only when the number of acts began increasing alarmingly did the executives of the legislature take up the issue, the spokesperson said. While that could be so, they need to be proved beyond doubt in an impartial and a fair forum.
Within Sri Lanka, protests against this arrogant impeachment remains a very isolated social protest by a concerned group of lawyers and some urban Sinhala middle class elements. What nevertheless becomes important is, the constituency of the growing protests. For the first time, a conspicuous section of the Sinhala middle class that steadfastly backed this regime against LTTE separatism and promised a reasonably fair and comfortable post war dividend, has got dislodged from their “patriotic” Sinhala platform. They now seem to understand, there is a serious mismatch between the regime they helped consolidate and its economic life that define its style of governance. These Sinhala urbanites have now joined the foray against the regime, buddying up with their direct opponents on the pro devolution platform, demanding a reversal of the impeachment. To that extent, the impeachment against CJ has shaken up the social power alignment against the regime.
