MEETING AND ARM-TWISTING
This unbecoming campaign by the Judicial branch -- or
certainly some sections of it --to force the hand of the
Executive to de-accelerate the pace of integrity investigations
of the Chief Justice, is now assuming manifestly absurd
proportions.
Yesterday, the District Court Judges of the country were
being summoned for a sudden meeting in Colombo this morning,
reportedly to counter what were called ‘threats to the
judiciary.’ We carry elsewhere, some of the reactions of the
legal community to the effect that disruption of the work of the
Judiciary in this way is unhealthy, uncalled for -- and in the
final analysis, utterly condemnable.
The ethics of convening all District Judges when there is an
impeachment motion tabled in Parliament, are -- to put it in the
mildest of terms - - deplorable. Any state officer under
investigation, say, on matters pertaining to interdiction, for
example, will not carry out routine functions let alone convene
extraordinary meetings, while investigative processes concerning
him/her are underway.
The Chief Justice of the country seems to think nothing of
doing the exact opposite in the equivalent situation however,
and this casts a brand new integrity shadow over the conduct of
the highest ranking judicial officer of this country. There is
no urgency to call a meeting of District Judges island-wide, and
as if short notice was not bad enough, there is a question mark
over the meeting-agenda which has apparently been sketchily
described as ‘countering threats to the judiciary.’
Any reasonable observer of events would not hesitate to
conclude that what comes under the rubric of ‘threats to the
judiciary’ when it comes from the party convening the said
meeting, could only be issues that face the CJ in the current
impeachment process now before Parliament.
That the smooth functioning of courts and the day-to-day
courtroom cases of litigants have to be held in abeyance for a
day, because the courtrooms get shut down when the ‘Boss calls a
meeting in Colombo’, is almost too shocking to contemplate.
Unless the conveners of the meeting have a really good reason
that they could put before the District Judges today, it would
be extremely difficult to avoid the reasonable conclusion
reached by people that the meeting was convened to eke out
unfair advantage, therefore the action bordering on abuse of
office if not constituting outright abuse of office,
indisputably.
If the meeting is to stave off an inevitable resignation and
execute a last minute rescue act of the embattled CJ by getting
the District Judges to plead on the basis of ‘independence of
the judiciary,’ that will be laughable. It is fervently hoped
for the sake of everybody concerned that this is not the
objective of the exercise, because if the District Judges are
summoned to Colombo by their Head, and then told to say that she
should stay in office, as otherwise the ‘judiciary is being
threatened’, that would certainly be an example of undue
influence for the history books.
The District Judges are captive in the present context; they
are being summoned by their superiors and would for professional
reasons be hard-put to go against any Resolution or any other
document put before them for their assent.
On the other hand, if perchance it transpired that today’s
meeting was to discuss ‘regular business’, that too casts a
similarly damning integrity shadow over the conduct of the Chief
Justice.
There can be nothing in the order of ‘ordinary business’ that
can be presided over by the Chief Justice of this country, in
the current circumstances, in which she is facing impeachment
charges in the Legislature --- which to the reasonable eye
appear to be of a rather serious nature. An ordinary civil
servant under the circumstances would have faced suspension or
an enforced leave of absence, and it is only the constitutional
stipulations that stop the CJ from facing similar discomfiture.
Those who ostensibly having the interests of the Chief
Justice at heart, are not doing themselves any favours by
embarking on this attritional war with the Legislature and
Executive, when the position of the Legislature on all of this
has been made abundantly clear by now. Such precipitous action
on the part of the Judicial branch, to say it with the least
ado, is bound to fail for its short-sightedness. |