Impeachment imbroglio -
separating noise from fact
It is
not unusual to see the full force of the NGO lobby and local and
foreign agent provocateurs aimed against the imminent
impeachment hearings on the conduct of Chief Justice Shirani
Bandaranaike. As usual, the NGO team appears to be skippered by
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, who has a print-ready statement on
anything that he probably thinks can increase the baksheesh flow
from his munificent funders, but that’s a different matter.
Why else, the hurry to say that the impeachment motion
involving the conduct of the Chief Justice is part of the effort
by the government to ‘control everything’?
This is rather amnesic on the part of the skipper of all NGO
skippers --- he probably does not remember that it was precisely
these same NGO lobby groups that were saying that the Chief
Justice should resign, when it was revealed that her husband was
serving in an Executive capacity in the National Savings Bank.
How convenient is it for these rather stern disciplinarians
in the non-governmental sector to argue on both sides of the
issue? Alright, they say, rectitude and general observation of
niceties requires that the Chief Justice should resign when
there is a ‘taint’ in the form of her husband being a public
servant appointed to a high-post.
But then, when the chief justice who does not resign on this
count, is to be investigated with an eye towards her removal
from office, the same people who said she should go are now
adamant that she should remain because the government, they say,
is not doing right.
One might as well say that the moral of the story is that by
the credo of these NGO mandarins, the government must always
lose, and of course could and should never win. The corollary of
that is of course that they are always right, even when they
patently contradict themselves on the issues, so as to appear
ludicrous.
The argument now is that the government is attempting to
exert influence on certain decisions that are to be taken by the
Supreme Court, and that there is an infringement upon the
independence of the judiciary. But didn’t the self-righteous
(also self-appointed) watchdogs and sentinels in our civil
society all say that it was just not right that the Chief
Justice stays on, when there was something that was just not
right about her conduct - i.e. her remaining in office while her
spouse was holding a high-post? Didn’t they say that justice
must not only be done, it must also appear to be done, inferring
that the slightest taint on the name of the Chief Justice even
by association has a harmful affect on her integrity or
performance, or both?
We certainly do not want to prejudice the hearings on the
issue of the chief justice that are to take place within the
Parliamentary Select Committee proceedings that would inevitably
give her a hearing on the motion to impeach her. But, since the
skipper of all NGO skippers had been so modest as to make known
his views on this matter first, his sage wisdom does call for
some kind of response.
Meanwhile, the US government too has made some observations
on this issue, in the form of a statement by the US ambassador
to Geneva Irene Donahue Chamberlain. She said at the UNHRC
Universal Periodic Review sessions in Geneva this week that Sri
Lanka should “Especially in light of today’s news of the efforts
to impeach the Chief Justice, strengthen judicial independence
by ending government interference with the judicial process,
protecting members of the judiciary from attacks, and restoring
a fair, independent, and transparent mechanism to oversee
judicial appointments.”
The sentiments in themselves sound impressive, but viewed in
context, they ignore the fact that the government is following
the lead of the opposition in ensuring judicial independence in
the country - of precisely the kind that the US government so
badly wants. It is in the main the opposition that wanted the
Chief Justice to be free from any association of taint, as
explained above in the preceding paragraphs of this editorial.
Again, the no-win in the situation borders on the absurd.
Observes Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu that the very people who made
the appointment, are now trying to impeach the person appointed.
The fact is that the appointment was made, precisely because
there is a transparent mechanism that is overseeing judicial
appointments, as Ms. Chamberlain has said she desires.
But then, as the civil society types themselves had stated,
despite the propriety of the appointment, the Chief Justice was
unable for long, to stay free from the affects of taint. If
that’s the case, isn’t the government strengthening judicial
independence in precisely the way the US ambassador wants by
asking the CJ to go, after having followed the due process and
transparency in the matter of appointing her to her post?
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