HOW MANY TIMES COULD A NGO PUNDIT LOSE?

Civil society as we know it is letting out banshee cries about how the impeachment, according to them, has caught the Legislature so flat-footed that there is an unprecedented level of societal 'failure'', and a collapse of governance reflected in the issue.

For trying to keep up the morale of their troops, these civil society foot soldiers -- mainly NGO mercenaries -- should be given a sympathetic handshake. Welcome to the land of make believe.

These people write the most dumbfounding of all fiction ever attempted in recent times - and they see a hopeful sign in almost everything, even the most innocuous of routine developments. For example they have been shouting themselves hoarse trying to say that because the President at one point said he is considering an independent committee to obtain a second opinion on the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) report, it is a sign that he is distancing himself from the impeachment effort.

The President didn't use subtle language when he made repeated speeches to the effect that he will not tolerate a lack of integrity from among those who hold the highest of offices. When he spoke to national newspaper editors just last Thursday, he stated at length that certain judges had resigned from their posts while there were ongoing investigations against their conduct.

He also spoke about the discounts given to the current Chief Justice, by a company allied to Ceylinco group, even as she heard cases that were connected to this business enterprise, and this was before Cabinet Ministers present elaborated on the issue.

Does this look at all like a President who is distancing himself from the impeachment motion, 'embarrassing his PSC membership' which is part of his government, as the various columnist-pundits who do day jobs as NGO bosses have been trying to make out, screaming from their regular bully pulpits?

It is fairly clear then -- the level of wishful thinking among these disappointed and forever losing NGO crowd. This is the type of thing they went on about in the end-phase of the war on the LTTE as well.

At various times, they made curious claims, some to the effect that the war machine has grown so big on itself that the President himself cannot stop the war though he wants to, and that the Defence Secretary is hell bent on the war while the President wants to distance himself from the hostilities -- which these pundits promised us, was a waste of time for everybody anyway as the LTTE could never be defeated.

None of what these banshee NGO scaremongers have been saying in the last decade or so has been coming true, but they insist on parroting theory after theory and conjuring up one doomsday scenario after another, though there is nothing as pathetic as fortune tellers who never have the good fortune of seeing a single one of their predictions come true, even for a change.

They take succour in the fact that Judge Christy Weeramantry has asked for some sort of judicial investigation of the impeachment charges, forgetting that this same judge Weeramantry was not heard to say anything when eight judges of the Supreme Court were sacked by a previous president with one stroke of a pen, without any PSC, or the faintest nod at due process whatsoever.

Neither has Weeramantry even been heard to be vocal about previous egregious insults to judicial integrity such as the stoning of judges houses during a previous administration, or the slow death of the judicial branch during Chandrika Bandaranaike's presidency due to some of the appointments she made to the judiciary, which were advised against by the most senior members of the Bar at that time.

The process may not be perfect, but it is what is embodied in our constitutional document, and is therefore in reality the only process there is to try a judge, and considering this fact, the people are by comparing and contrasting how Sri Lankan judges were treated in the remembered past, bound to come to the conclusion that the current impeachment is legal and within the bounds of the available legal devices - whereas same political forces now asking for better treatment of the CJ, previously treated judges who served at the will and pleasure of the then rulers, in the manner of serfs in medieval fiefdoms.