Daily News Online
http://www.liyathabara.com/   KRRISH SQUARE - Luxury Real Estate  

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

Home

 | SHARE MARKET  | EXCHANGE RATE  | TRADING  | OTHER PUBLICATIONS   | ARCHIVES | 

dailynews
 ONLINE


OTHER PUBLICATIONS


OTHER LINKS

Marriage Proposals
Classified
Government Gazette

 WHAT – NO EVIL?

Today’s expose on the front page and the op-ed to the right of you indicate the financial jiggery-pokery that the Chief Justice of this country was responsible for, in the handling of her private accounts. The sums involved were to the tune of millions.

The methods involved were, to say the very least, innovative to the point of being the stuff of a regular detective thriller. Here she has millions. There they vanish. This, all, from the supreme judicial office of the country.

It is a very bad record, all things considered. There have been reams written since the recent impeachment proceedings began against the head of the country’s Supreme Court. But alarmingly, none of the rights activists and the Transparency International corruption czars have said anything about the propriety or otherwise of the Chief Justice’s financial dealings.

As they say - - the silence is so deafening. If they would have thought that they do not see anything objectionable in the Chief Justice’s money matters, they would certainly have said so. But they did not.

They cannot afford to be so flagrantly out of line. No sane person could suggest that the CJ like Caesar’s wife, is above suspicion. That would be so utterly ludicrous, for even those contortionists at Transparency International who have historically had such a rather transparent set of double standards.

But what is shocking is the fundamental moral decline in the country, to the extent that there are people who think the so called independence of the judiciary is so important that they wager the integrity of the judiciary can be all but forgotten!

Taken at a more fundamental, even, it is hard to imagine that the paragons of virtue and good governance and integrity find it so is difficult to acknowledge that it is impossible, to ignore real lapses in integrity - - real financial wrongdoing and malpractice – by simplifying the equation and saying that it is all on behalf of a good cause, which is the independence of the judiciary.

This is a bit similar to, say, a contention that pedophilia is somehow passable as long as it is practiced for the more noble purpose of the prevention of murder.

By any yardstick the so called judicial independence issues involved here are minuscule, even on the unlikely assumption that they exist at all? Really, is the independence of the judiciary threatened by the movers of the impeachment motion?

Are there any personal cases that the Supreme Court has authority over that involve the 117 signatories to the impeachment motion? Or are there any abuse of power issues involving these 117 parliamentarians personally?

The answer is in the emphatic negative. This means that there is no real ulterior or personally dictated motive that the Legislature harbours, to impeach the Chief Justice.

If there is no finger pointing at the movers of the impeachment motion, there is no crime, and there is no smoking gun either. Whereas, as far as the integrity issues involving the CJ are concerned, the ‘crime’ and the smoking gun are very real.

The accounts that have been emptied and replenished and the dates involved point to a real intent to conceal and therefore mislead. If concealing millions is the ‘crime’ the smoking gun is that these millions were carefully manipulated, so as to evade the regulators -- with a trail of banking records leaving incontrovertible evidence.

But yet, the civil society corruption watchers, whistle blowers and lily white moralists etc., are largely silent. Is it because they feel that there is certain types of corruption carried out by certain types of people that is excusable?

The only things these generally shrill activists seem to be saying is that there is corruption in society, and therefore the CJ’s is not something special. This is no malpractice however that has been invented for general mischief by some scurrilous website. This is obvious, glaring, and on the record misdoing from the Chief Justice of the country.

What’s worse than her behaviour, is the hypocrisy of the civil society elite who turn the other way because they obviously want to see no evil.
 

How independent is the Judiciary?

The following anecdotal evidence is narrated to test the independence of the judiciary that was supposed to exist before the current contest between Parliament and the Judiciary broke out. The raging controversy is based on the claim that the Judiciary was independent and the appointment of a Parliamentary Select Committee to probe into the conduct of the Chief Justice Dr. Shirani Bandaranayke erodes the independence of the Judiciary.

Full Story

CJ’S BLINKING ACCOUNTS:

OPEN AND SHUT CASE OF ACCOUNT FIXING/CORRUPTION

With the Parliamentary Select Committee hearings on the impeachment of the Chief Justice due today, independent observers have expressed shock and dismay over the manner in which some of her financial dealings have been manipulated, with a view to hiding her true financial worth from assessors.

Full Story

Mother Sri Lanka Trust launches RUN for Lanka

The first provincial workshop of Mother Sri Lanka Trust’s latest initiative Project RUN was successfully conducted at the main Conference Hall at Temple Trees on October 25, 2012 with the participation of over 2000 students and 150 teachers and Principals representing 150 schools from the Western Province. This event followed the launch of Project RUN which was held on October 12, 2012 in the presence of the Secretary to the President and the Trustee of Mother Sri Lanka Trust, Lalith Weeratunga at Temple Trees to 600 plus Education Directors attached to the ministry at provincial, zonal, and divisional levels.

Full Story

Power of media and rule of INFORMATION

The rule that information should be subjected to a certain level of regulation has been accepted in the history of newspapers. Prof Sunanda Mahendra de Mel is more competent to provide evidence in this regard for I am much junior to him in the field of university education. What I wish to explain is that we all use a common space in society whether in a newspaper, radio or television. To explain it further when you raise a voice individually it is heard over a small distance. But when you raise a voice through television it is heard by the whole country.

Full Story

 

EMAIL |   PRINTABLE VIEW | FEEDBACK |

Destiny Mall & Residency
Casons Rent-A-Car
www.defence.lk
Donate Now | defence.lk
www.apiwenuwenapi.co.uk
LANKAPUVATH - National News Agency of Sri Lanka
www.army.lk
Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL)
www.news.lk

| News | Editorial | Business | Features | Political | Security | Sport | World | Letters | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House Copyright © 2012 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.

Comments and suggestions to : Web Editor