CAVALIAR AND INCORRECT
Predictably, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Ms. Navinathan Pillai has issued a statement that is clearly not
within her remit as a UN official in purporting to classify the
recent impeachment as some kind of a Rule of Law issue
concerning this country. Pronouncing on what is clearly within
the constitutional right of the President of this country is
absolutely not within her remit, as even if somebody were to
oppose the impeachment per se, there is nothing that can be said
about the candidate for the succession, a matter clearly within
the constitutional prerogative of the President.
But the office of the Human Rights Commissioner, which is by
the very manner in which the institution is structured, heavily
dependent on the input of non-governmental organizations, has
obviously taken the version of the anti-Sri Lankan dollar paid
NGO lobby as gospel when arriving at the conclusion it did about
the appointment of the new Chief Justice Mohan Peiris. Yes,
Mohan Peiris defended Sri Lanka's human rights record in Geneva
and in other forums where it was necessary.
Does that somehow make Peiris's appointment illegal by any
stretch? Absolutely not. There are no Supreme Court orders
stating unlike in the case of the former Chief Justice, that
Peiris is prevented from hearing certain types of cases, for
example. It would be remembered that as for the former CJ, a
clear court order had been made by a Supreme Court bench that
she is forbidden from hearing cases that pertain to the issue of
devolution of power, as she was intimately involved with
formulating policy in this area as an academic.
Sans any such strictures on Mohan Peiris, what is the legal
bar to his appointment to succeed the former Chief Justice? None
whatsoever. What authority then does the UN Commissioner on
Human Rights have, to make a pronouncement on what is a strictly
an internal issue, squarely within the purview of the country'
elected Executive?
If on the other hand, she deems that somehow there is some
kind of conflict of interests issue related to the appointment,
which then boils down to an objection based on moral and not
legal grounds, why is she framing the issue of succession as a
Rule of Law related problem, as she has done in her statement
issued from the High Commissioner's office in Geneva? If the
appointment is legal, the Rule of Law is not transgressed,
period, so what is the basis for her intervention?
All of this goes to show that the UN High Commissioner on
Human Rights is rather cavalier in making her pronouncements on
internal issues of a country, which makes her statements
tantamount to the abuse of the powers of her office. It
certainly appears as if she is making her views known from a
standpoint of ignorance of the facts involved, perhaps at the
behest of the vast corpus of NGOs that are affiliated now to the
UN Human Rights Commissioner's office.
Ms. Navi Pillai should be suitably rebutted, and she will be,
we suspect, but that is not the issue -- the more troubling
aspect of her intervention is the fact that the UN High
Commissioner's office can be used to queer the pitch as it were,
before the UN Human Rights Council sessions which are conducted
with the participation of all member states of the council, and
on the basis of one country one vote.
Such a process should not be prejudiced by NGOs which have
made their own heavily weighted judgments, arising from the
agendas they are compelled to follow due to the heavy inputs of
the donors who work to agendas that have nothing to do with the
legitimate interests of the people of the countries involved.
For example, in Sri Lanka, the people are more interested in
leaving the memories of war behind, and getting ahead with their
lives, which are much better now as a result of the post war
economic uplift. But the NGOs insist on keeping these people
shackled to the memories of war, thorough spurious and overdone
advocacy of concepts of 'accountability' and 'reconciliation.' A
UN High Commissioner should not have the leeway to impact on a
country's internal affairs unfairly in this way. It's time the
people of member countries asserted themselves, against a new
form of alien domination.
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