Supreme Court is above parliament – Ceylon Tobacco Company

 Saturday, 22 February 2014 

In total disregard of the act passed by parliament recently to make it mandatory for pictorial warning against smoking in cigarette packets, the Ceylon Tobacco Company continues to release cigarette packets to the market without such warning, saying that the act passed in parliament is irrelevant and that the Court of Appeal is yet to make a ruling on the matter. 

The Court of Appeal is due to announce its verdict on May 12, and the CTC has said in a listing to the Colombo share market that it will continue to use the old packets without the pictorial warning in respect of the injunction issued by the Supreme Court on 20 September last year.

Commenting on this, a legal expert told us that the CTC recognizes the Supreme Court as being above parliament when going about with its businesses. Parliament is above the Supreme Court only at exceptional instances such as impeachments against chief justices, he said. Had it been a member of the ‘king’s family’ who has been cited a respondent in this case, instead of health minister Maithripala Sirisena, parliament would once again have been declared as the supreme institution, the legal expert added.