Lesser known facts about the impeachment saga
Dr Kamal Wickremasinghe
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Parliament |
The now concluded impeachment trial of the Chief Justice (CJ) was
remarkable for the ridiculous nature of the theatrics staged by the
defendant and her legal advisors. It also stood out for the more
significant reason of typifying and demonstrating the key elements of a
widely used template devised by Western intelligence agencies to create
unrest in post-colonial countries. Though the operation failed, they
tried.
A careful analysis of the major steps staged by the local
‘supporters’ who campaigned against the impeachment shows that they came
straight out of a US “Training Manual for Unconventional Warfare”,
Training Circular -TC- 18-01 of the United States Army John F. Kennedy
Special Warfare Centre and School (TC). The TC lays out instructions for
the US Special Forces on how to exploit another nation’s political,
military, economic, and psychological vulnerabilities by developing and
sustaining resistance groups to accomplish US strategic objectives,
formalising the neo-colonialist model of subversion that has afflicted
developing countries attempting to gain political and economic
independence since the 1950s.
The strategy outlined is based on co-opting and directing local
‘instruments’ such as opposition political parties, NGOs liberally
funded by the West, ethnic and religious minority groups and the English
language media in a targeted country to manufacture an ongoing low
intensity internal conflict. The ultimate objective of subversion using
these instruments is to install a proxy government controlled by them,
and is amenable to their aims.
The attempts to manage the key stages of the impeachment trial by the
CJ, her legal team and her ‘civil society’ support groups provides a
case study of the TC in operation, albeit a failed one.
More drama than Jasaya and Lenchina
The situation that gave rise to the impeachment proceedings, the rift
between the executive and the judiciary, is the substance the
subversives’ dreams are made of. Even though it was the CJ’s
intransigence on the matter of a simple courtesy call to the president’s
office that created the rift, matters of propriety on the issues
involved was largely irrelevant for the purposes of the subversives
operating under diplomatic cover.
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DR KAMAL
WICKREMASINGHE |
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Chief
Justice, Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake |
Nor did the fact that the matter essentially went down to the
personality of the particular individual occupying the august position
of CJ, rather than any attempt by the executive to influence the
impartiality of the judiciary, was of importance to them: all that
mattered was there was a chance to subvert. The strategy emanated from
there.
From the time the impeachment idea was mooted, there was rumour,
innuendo, conspiracy theories and other disinformation designed to add a
‘vicious’ spin to the situation, designed primarily to influence public
opinion, to create suspicion, that there was something ‘beneath the
surface’ to the issue.
The level of support the CJ received showed that such propaganda
clearly failed to ‘bite’ beyond the already converted Colombo middle
classes of the Pidgin English speaking kind.
International ‘pressure’, one of the most important elements of the
strategy came in the form of a statement by the United Nations ‘Special
Rapporteur’ on the independence of judges and lawyers. The young lady
reminded us that international standards require that judges be removed
‘only in exceptional circumstances involving incapacity or gross
misconduct’.
She ‘warned’ against the misuse of disciplinary proceedings as a
reprisals mechanism against independent judges.
The winsome Special Rapporteur failed to mention any grounds for her
suspecting such hidden agendas, and more importantly, the source of
imprimatur for such forceful intervention by her in the domestic affairs
of a member country: it could not have been from the UN because Article
2 (7) of the UN Charter explicitly states that the “United Nations has
no authority to intervene in matters which are within the domestic
jurisdiction of any State”.
It was no coincidence that another ‘high level’ UN delegation visited
Sri Lanka during the impeachment hearings, purportedly “to examine the
implementation of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission
(LLRC) recommendations as well as other post-war developments.”
The TC-18-01strategy requires that the concocted vicious rumours be
put out in the public arena in great volumes, repetitively: this task
was duly performed by two daily newspapers with family connections to
opposition groups and the multitude of subversive web sites operating
from within Sri Lanka and from beyond the shores.
Independent judiciary
The attempted ‘high flown’ comment published through these sources
questioned the legality of the impeachment process, consistently failing
to mention that Section 107 of the Constitution provided for the
impeachment of judges on the grounds of ‘misbehaviour’. The legal
argument concentrated on the ‘validity’ of the Standing Order that gave
the Speaker of Parliament the powers to appoint a select committee and
the powers of that committee. The discussion on Standing Orders failed
to mention once, the fundamental fact that they derive legality to lay
down parliamentary procedure from Article 74 of the 1978 Constitution.
The cohorts ‘in bed’ with their foreign masters included some paid
and disgruntled groups who turn up for all such ‘protests’ and purely
envious middle class groups who seem to be frustrated by their inability
to bring out the dawn of a Sri Lankan Spring, due mainly to lack of
interest on the part of the general public.
The maximum they could gather for any rally was a several hundred
people, denoting the low ranking the issue of impeachment received among
the larger public.
They appeared to simply ignore the fact that the Parliament’s move
was based on a request by 117 members, as provided for under Section 107
of the Constitution. The strategy appeared to have been to portray the
impeachment process as a grave encroachment by the executive of the
‘holy territory’ of an independent judiciary. The message was repeated
umpteen times, but without achieving the expected reinforcement.
The hearing itself produced more drama by the CJ herself and her
legal team. The dramatic walk out clearly appeared pre-planned,
especially following damning evidence by a fellow female judge, to show
at the end of the trial that the process was ‘not fair’. The walk out of
the four opposition MPs was designed to add to that perception.
Following the walk out, there were photographs of CJ at the Temple of
the Tooth in Kandy, probably to remind the public of the early remarks
of the prelates (who did not appear in the photos).
As with all conspiracies of this nature, incompetent and mumbling
members of the team can harm the credibility of the whole operation. The
legal representations following the walk out were of such farcical
proportions that it bore out the lack of prospects for countering the
evidence against: after reiterating the innocence of their client
(several times), her lawyer’s letter requested the Speaker to suspend
the current PSC proceedings and to appoint an independent ‘external
panel’ to examine the charges.
This absurd request showed that the legal team had failed to notice
that the Standing Orders do not empower the Speaker to appoint such a
panel.
The Western Corporate media, in cohort with paid local operatives in
the Western government financed NGOs, the corrupt members of the local
English language media and some members of the university teaching
community, is trying their best to transmit a message to the world that
Sri Lanka is going through a number of Constitutional, political, and
economic crises. This message is disseminated within the context of
Western media’s narrative of the desirability of the fabled British, US,
and increasingly French, advocacy for human rights, democracy, and rule
of law, the pretext for aggressive neo-colonial subversion, and
long-term political and economic control.
These moves to subvert have acquired an additional dimension after
China began to develop mainly economic relations with many developing
countries which they perceive as a challenge to the hegemony of the US.
In theatres like Sri Lanka, the traditional colonial power Britain and
the inheritor of the empire, the US have accelerated subversive efforts
and intensified aggression, partly directed against China, resenting
their strong friendship with Sri Lanka. Internationally, they take the
same approach against Russia, currently re-discovering its strength as a
global power.
The intent of these subversive efforts is to exploit the country’s
political, economic, and psychological vulnerabilities by developing and
sustaining resistance forces to accomplish Western strategic objectives.
These operations are designed not to achieve immediate success with a
particular operation, such as this particular one, but to attack and
degrade the current Sri Lankan government’s morale, cohesion and
operational effectiveness gradually. Their strategy is to separate the
population from the government over time, portraying it as corrupt and
incapable of effective governance, creating the conditions for popular
rebellion.
There are other reasons too: the US system has carefully nurtured a
political and administrative system based on a constitutional culture
that effectively undermines majority preference, and indeed majority
rule.
The US judiciary, stacked at every level with political appointees,
clearly intervene strategically in cases with social and economic policy
repercussion and political developments.
One of the clearest examples of crucial judicial intervention in the
operation of democracy was in the 2000 Presidential election contest
between George Bush and Al Gore, the closest ever: Al Gore, the
Democrat, received 50,988,442 votes; George Bush, the Republican,
received 50,449,494. Bush was declared the winner by the Supreme Court
by rejecting Gore’s challenge to the errors of machine counting that
disadvantaged him. The Supreme Court ruled that there is no right to
vote for President under the Constitution and effectively stopped the
vote count when Bush had a 300 vote lead in Florida.
The message the subversive elements are trying to convey is clearly
aimed at people unfamiliar with Sri Lanka, its people and politics but
have a passing interest in international affairs.
Anyone who is familiar with Sri Lanka or has spent time on the island
will easily see that the country they know is different.
The problem this subversive movement is facing is that the largely
contrives ‘issues’ they keep harping on are not felt by the general
population and the public does not appear to be concerned by them. But
the government needs to take care to monitor their activities,
particularly of the local collaborators.
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