OH YEAH RIGHT, COLOMBO DID NOT KICK EIGHT SUPREME

COURT JUDGES OUT! (Snicker)

J. R. Jayewardene threw the book at eight judges of the Supreme Court of this country. No, not the law books that he swore by and studied from in those Pushcannon days.

He threw his own little green book at them -- the thoughts of President Jayewardene. According to this little green book, when a country changed her constitution, that country’s President had the right to send more than half the Supreme Court packing.

Little green book

There was no impeachment not even by the rules of the Article 107 that he wrote into his brand new, spanking constitution. Colombo elite lawyers and the Colombo elite NGO brigade took the little green book wisdom of J R Jayewardene as their gospel.

They did not raise a finger, break one coconut, or tie one pirith nool before any saffron sage opposing J R Jayewardene’s greening wisdom. Is it that they didn’t do so because J. R. Jayewardene did not even say that there are integrity issues against these eight judges sent home?

He did not say anything at all, or comment about their behaviour or say that they do not fit the times, or cannot carry out his vision. He just sacked them.

Justice Christopher. G. Weeramanthry who subsequently ended up a judge of the World Court, did not either then or later, say anything - - certainly anything that’s remembered, about J R Jayewardene’s sacking of eight Supreme Court judges just because he could.

But then, by that time Colombo and that means Weeramantry too, had ceded demi-god status to the President with his little green book full of Jayewaredne thoughts. He was one of them too, these Colombans, and such people could aspire to godliness.

Not only could they aspire to godliness, they were encouraged to be gods. I don’t know what Weeramantry said then but it may have been on the lines of, ‘Well, certainly a change of the constitution calls for a changing of the guard, my brother’ -- and away he might have gone for his constitutional.

All the lawyer lovers in the UNP were in the Cabinet! No, really, they were in the entire parliamentary group, 75 percent of them who were lawyers!. And if that was not enough, they were in thrall of H.W. Jayewardene the President’s stalwart little brother who had a bound little law book of his own called ‘H. W. Jayewardene’s thoughts for the Sri Lankan Bar.’

He had grabbed Hulftsdorp by the forelock, and had those lawyers drinking from between his knees. But in fact the that entirety of Hulftsdorp was happy to be doing exactly that.

It is as if they were goading the brothers on, saying “Stone them’’, “Kick some ass,’’ and as if on cue, the HW JR combine did so, stoning the houses of Supreme Court judges, because I guess, sending eight of them home was not enough. And talk about brothers running the show!

S. L. Gunasekera was a young man then, but he was old enough to say boo to these geese, but he did not say doodley-squat. Not for him any narratives about not appearing in Hulftsdorp at all -- because let us see, if for one impeached judge he says that a lawyer must not appear before the succeeding judge, for eight judges sacked -- and mind you kicked out and not impeached -- he should of course have prescribed eight times eight that medicine right?

Colombo legal fraternity

And eight times eight of not appearing before the succeeding Chief Justice, is to not appear is courts at all by any math, but the young and affable S. L. Gunasekera appeared in courts and he would have bowed to all those bewigged wags, even though he may not have scraped.

If that is what could be said about S. L. Gunasekera and C. G. Weeramantry the less that could be said about the Colombo legal fraternity the better. To say the least, they could have afforded and cracked sixteen times the coconuts those days than were cracked in October of 2012 or thereabout, but they would have been considered crackers if they did so in the Jayewardene era, because all lawyers then had dyed themselves green and were trumpeting about the success of the old Law College Pushcannon boy who went onto become President (see he went to Royal and Law College Colombo, no Harvard or Cambridge for him -- and didn’t he go on to sack eight judges heh heh, the luck of it?)

C. G. Weeramantry

S. L. Gunasekera

So some 35 or so years later, not just C. G. Weermantry but S. L. Gunasekera and the rest of the Colombo Bar has purportedly grown a backbone.

Or have they? Or, they know that they would not have their houses stoned or anything drastic like that, as it was in that era of the little green book. There is still much money to be earned, and of course if they thought there is real merit in not working with a new Chief Justice due to the impeachment of the current one, they would have done so, but they are not doing that because this is the lawyer-loving party, and these lawyers and Arabs love to live on dates.

What would they say? That it is 35 years and a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, and this is a more liberal democratic era, which translates as – no we will not do what we are doing now, even under duress if it was a UNP government?

Or a Colombo elite regime. All right, it was not 35 years ago when the entire Supreme Court came under potential threat with Chandrika’s appointment of a new Chief Justice.

S. L. Gunasekera strutted the corridors of Hulftsdop then, congratulating junior lawyers who rose against this oncoming contagion, but not a typewritten sentence from him or one statement about ‘stopping this nonsense.’ C. G. Weeramantry must have been enjoying his days at the Hague in preparation for a time when he could sound suitably sanctimonious back home.

After all, by the time he got to Colombo, there would be enough barbarians inside of the Hulftsdorp gates already! Impeach one judge, and he could make eighty times the noise than about sacking eight of them, what eh, Your Lordship?