The
impeachment of a judge of a superior court is indisputably a tragic event to be
dealt with due solemnity and wholly divorced from all considerations of
extraneous matters such as party affiliations and `loyalties’; prospects of
rewards; political gain etc. It is a solemn occasion where Members of Parliament
are required and indeed bound to discard and ignore completely their party
affiliations, the decisions of their respective parties on such matter as well
as the instructions of their party whips and decide wholly dispassionately and
objectively whether on the evidence adduced before them, the Judge concerned was
or was not guilty of any one or more of the charges against him that gave rise
to the resolution for his impeachment and whether such charges were of
sufficient gravity to warrant his dismissal.
The
entire object of an impeachment being to `cleanse’ the judiciary if indeed it
needed `cleansing’, there is clearly no `place’ in such a proceeding for
lawlessness, thuggery , fraud, boorishness histrionics, exhibitionism or the
wholesale misuse of religious ceremonies to serve political ends. Tragically the
recent `drama’ relating to the impeachment of Chief Justice
Shirani
Bandaranayake saw all these unsavoury features but not an iota of
objectivity or any of those salutary practices that should have been evident
therein.
Commencing
with the Select Committee which was alleged to have investigated the charges
against Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake and arrived at `findings’ in respect
of some of them, and ignoring, for the moment, the facts that both the Supreme
Court as well as the Court of Appeal had held that it was constituted
unconstitutionally and that the
Court
of Appeal had quashed, by way of certiorari, its purported findings,
let us consider whether the conduct of that Select Committee was in any way
objective, dispassionate and/or responsible.
One
disgusting fact about which there can be no dispute is that some members of the
Select Committee behaved in an utterly uncouth manner towards the Chief Justice
which was clearly designed to humiliate her and perhaps to cause her to leave.
The fact that those who behaved in such manner were not possessed of an iota of
`breeding’ apart, one startling fact about such behaviour is that those who sank
so low as to behave in such uncouth fashion actually thought they were doing
something clever and laudable !!! What was even more startling was that they,
not having been taken to task for such behaviour by even the
President,
the inference is inescapable that such rowdyism as was displayed by them was
indeed approved by him and was part and parcel of a deliberate plan to compel
the Chief Justice to throw in the towel.
Such
rowdyism as was displayed within the Select Committee was echoed in a different
context when mobs of raucous alleged supporters of the Government were brought
to Hulftsdorp by some ambitious politicians and they, while armed to the teeth
with clubs, staves etc shouted slogans and displayed banners highly defamatory
of the Chief Justice, moved around the hordes of police officers who had been
deployed there ostensibly to preserve law and order (!!) displaying `proudly’
their grisly weaponry without any let or hindrance from those alleged “guardians
of the law”. One does not need more than one guess to visualize what their
reactions would have been if those slogans had been aimed at the President or
the new `Chief Justice’. It being wholly unthinkable that any police officer
would have so ignored breaches of the law committed by any person whomsoever in
his presence, the conclusion is inescapable that the inaction of those salaried
men was necessarily a result of superior orders.
It
is more than passing strange that the Government has yet failed to appreciate
the dangers of using thugs as an instrument of state policy. They appear to be
oblivious to the fact that the “loyalty” of the thug being wholly to himself,
the day cannot be far off when the thug tires of the Government using his
thuggery to impose his will on the dissenter, and decides to use their `talents’
for his own purposes even though that would be against the Government. That is a
day that will be rued by all including those sycophants of the Government [whose
name is “legion”] to whom no act of sycophancy or abject servility is too much
provided it secures for them, some measure of patronage from the
Government.
When
to these facts are added the unbelievable facts that requests repeatedly made by
Counsel for the Chief Justice for a list of documents sought to be produced and
information about the procedure to be followed by that Select Committee fell on
deaf ears, and they were given a
bundle
of some 1000 documents and told that the so called inquiry would be
continued within 24 hours, the fact that no fair inquiry was contemplated and
that the entire object of the exercise was to get rid of the Chief Justice by
whatever means possible and replace her with another who, in the Government’s
perception would be partial to it becomes as clear as crystal.
While
this so called impeachment process has displayed a degree of perfidy
unparalleled in the history of our land, one final act of overt deception damns
for all time, the `Select Committee exercise’ as a `no holds barred’ exercise in
victimization. This shameful act of unparalleled fraud was committed when the
Chairman of the Select Committee having announced that no oral evidence would be
led, adduced the
oral
evidence of some 17 witnesses after the Chief Justice had `walked
out’. If the Select Committee intended adducing such oral evidence, how is it
that so manifest a lie was uttered and the Chief Justice misled ?? How was it
that all those witnesses attended the Select Committee and gave evidence at such
short notice? There clearly having been no time to secure their attendance by
due service of summons, it must follow that they were standing by to give
evidence when called and were hence part and parcel of a contemptible plan to
victimize the Chief Justice.
That
all this was wholly unnecessary is a fact so manifest that it needs no
repetition. Nobody would disagree with the proposition that if the Chief Justice
had been corrupt, she had to go. This same proposition would be equally
applicable to the President and other political appointees including ministers.
There is clearly no gainsaying the fact that had the Chief Justice been
subjected to a fair inquiry or trial, nobody could possibly have objected to her
removal from office if she was found guilty of corruption. Yet she was not
subjected to such an inquiry or trial and the entire impeachment process was
converted into a political circus. Why ????
There
are several unanswered questions surrounding the impeachment. One of the chief
among them is why the President appointed the Chief Justice’s
husband Chairman
of the Insurance Corporation and then of the National Savings Bank. What was the
aptitude displayed by Kariyawasam to hold such a position when, to the best of
my knowledge and belief he had only displayed some aptitude in the field of
marketing motor vehicles !! Thus his appointment to those posts gives rise to
the inference that such appointments were given so as to win over the Chief
Justice to the Government camp and secure judgments from her whether as Chief
Justice or as a Judge of the Supreme Court, that were favourable to the
Government. Those appointments were,
in
short `bribes’ and both the giver and the taker are
equally
culpable so that it is not possible for one wrongdoer to ride the
high horse and point an accusing finger at the other.Yet, this, precisely is
what, happened.
That
the filth called “politics” would pollute the impeachment process was a foregone
conclusion. Thus, there were, on the Government side, a number of sycophants who
sought to portray the impeachment drama as a contest between the President who
gave leadership to the Country to defeat the LTTE on the one hand and the Chief
Justice on the other!! There were other sycophants of the Government who purport
to see an international “conspiracy” in any dissent offered to anything the
Government proposed doing who saw in the Chief Justice’s spirited defence of
herself, a part of such a “conspiracy”. What these addicts to “conspiracy”
theories would have to say about the appointment of
Mohan
Peiris to succeed the Chief Justice is left to be seen !!!.
It
is indeed tragic that even members of the Bar and the Chief Justice herself
succumbed to the temptation of bringing politics into this process. Thus, we
experienced the tragic spectacle of members of the Bar engaging in the silly
exercise of smashing coconuts on the road to ‘save” the Chief Justice while some
other exhibitionists flocked round the Chief Justice’s car, making sure that
they are photographed when the Chief Justice first went to parliament and
returned therefrom. They even engaged in `strikes’, an exercise which, to my
mind, is wholly unbecoming of the dignity of a member of the Bar.
Not
to be outdone even the Chief Justice got the Ven Maduluwawe Sobhitha to chant
Pirith prior to her setting out for her “inquisition”. Religion being something
that is essentially personal, nobody could have faulted the Chief Justice if she
got such ceremonies performed at her residence – however, when they are
performed in the Court premises, they cry out for the conclusion that it was a
part of a political exercise.
It
was not only such amateurs who sought to infect this process with politics. Both
the UNP and the JVP lost no time in “jumping the bandwagon” and seeking to gain
some political capital out of these tragic events by posing dishonestly as
champions of the independence of the judiciary while maintaining a deafening
silence about their own efforts to undermine that noble principle. Not to be
out-done
Sarath
Fonseka made one of his usual stupid statements by inviting the Chief
Justice to take to politics.
As
is usually the case the foreigner [both foreign Governments as well as their
NGOs] who just cannot tolerate the idea of Sri Lanka being an independent
Country which does not require his tutelage to manage its own affairs, was quick
to put in his two cents worth condemning the impeachment. Apart from adding fuel
to the flames lit by the “international conspiracy theorists”, there are hardly
any results that followed from their presumptuous prognostications. Of these
foreign effusions it need only be said that one of the most vociferous among
them is the international thug which once bathed Vietnamese babies in Napalm
and presently runs a torture chamber at Guantanamo Bay !!!.
Sri
Lanka has been through a trial by fire. The country was rent in two by the
impeachment. Today the dust seems to be settling over the impeachment drama.
However, it would be a mistake of monumental proportions for us, now, to say
“lets put the past behind us” and proceed with “business as usual”. One
important aspect of the impeachment drama is that it brought into focus and the
public eye, the independence of the judiciary and its vital importance to the
life of our Country as a civilized Nation. It also brought into focus as never
before, the corrupting influence of power and the self serving machinations of
the sycophant resulting in otherwise decent People of whom much more was
expected being wholly incapable or unwilling to accept or admit their own
mistakes and most of all the monumental dangers presented to the Country by
thuggery being used as an instrument of state power.
If
the tragic drama of the impeachment results in National attention being focused
on these evils and the dangers that face our Country, and we have the strength
and the fortitude to overcome them, the anguish of the impeachment would not
have been in vain but will result in this Country becoming a better place in
which to live.
18 January 2013 – The United Nations human rights chief today spoke out against the impeachment and removal of Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice, saying it is a “calamitous setback” for rule of law in the South Asian nation, as well as for accountability and reconciliation.
