CJ QUIT PSC AS PRE-PLANNED; TRANSCRIPTS SHOW SHE WASN’T ABUSED

Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake was not verbally abused by any member of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) but she came into the meetings with the preconceived plan of walking out of it, Chairman and Environment Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa said at the Editors’ breakfast meeting with the President yesterday.

She, from the beginning of the PSC proceedings, claimed she had no confidence in it, and therefore her modus operandi of hoping to walk out without offering a defence was evident from the very start, he said.

“She refused to take the oath before the PSC proceedings and did so after much persuasion, and we understood that she had come with a premeditated plan to spurn the PSC, as the charges which were to be probed were serious, and she was guilty of them,” the PSC chairman, together with some of its members, added.

The only way of responding was to walk out of the PSC saying she had lost the confidence in the PSC hearings, they stated.

No opposition members who were in the PSC had stated she was verbally abused by any member of the PSC. Furthermore, verbatim transcripts of the PSC inquiry will show there was no misconduct on the part of any member of PSC body, and the public will be privy soon to these documents, it was added.When the Chief Justice has committed blunders as an official of this high positionshould not have done -- the PSC is the only way of probing to verify whether these charges are true or not.

“But as she was aware of her conduct in the topmost legal position, as Chief Justice, she wanted to repudiate the PSC to get away from it.

“Impeachment is the due process laid down in the constitution in the face of her wrongdoing. This was in the constitution under which the impeachment of the then Chief Justice Neville Samarakoon in 1978 was mooted and Hansard reports at that time stated this was the only way to investigate a Chief Justice – and the present opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was also in Parliament,’’ the PSC members said.They said the Chief Justice has solicited political and NGOs’ supportbringing disrepute to the Judiciary, with the help of some insidiousmembers of the legal fraternity.Ministers Susil Premajayantha, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Wimal Weerawansa and Dilan Perera, all members of the PSC, attended the meeting.