This
is surely over the top. Sri Lanka’s history has had some very black spots.
Besides the vicious 26-year civil war waged by the brutal Tigers, Sri Lanka
endured years of terror from a Sinhalese-Marxist insurgency in its south and
was among the worst-hit victims of the devastating tsunami of December 2004.
The
impeachment of Mrs Bandaranayake, in contrast, was a bloodless tussle of
constitutional interpretation. Even the hysterical warnings of a constitutional
crisis seemed a little overblown. Just a few days later it began to look more
like a minor squall briefly interrupting the Rajapaksas’ ascent to the sunlit
uplands of untrammelled power. Although Sri Lanka’s lawyers have almost
unanimously rejected Mrs Bandaranayake’s impeachment and regard her
replacement, Mohan Peiris, as an illegitimate government stooge, she did not
force a confrontation by turning up to work on January 15th. Her entry to the
Supreme Court would have been blocked by the police. She also moved her
belongings out of the chief justice’s official residence, saying her life was
in danger. Deprived of a figurehead, her disgruntled colleagues and supporters
did not know where to turn.
The
alarmists are quite right, however, that the affair has done perhaps
irreparable damage to the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.
The ostensible cause of Mrs Bandaranayake’s impeachment was alleged corruption.
She was found guilty of interfering in a case involving a company that had sold
a flat to her sister, of not declaring bank accounts and of failing to resign
when her husband, as chairman of a state-owned savings bank, faced bribery
charges.
She
and her supporters, however, see her troubles—and the farcically unfair hearing
she was given—as political, stemming from court rulings the government did not
like. In particular, the Supreme Court insisted on amendments to an
anti-poverty bill that was set to confer great powers on the minister of
economic development, the president’s brother Basil.
Constitutionally,
the legislature has the power to impeach the chief justice. That it did so is
partly the fault of the Supreme Court itself. After the 2010 election, it ruled
that an opposition party could not sack members who had crossed the floor of
Parliament to join the government coalition. Since Sri Lanka has a system of
proportional representation, this seemed perverse. But it gave the government
the two-thirds parliamentary majority it needed to ram through its
objectionable constitutional amendments—and to impeach the chief justice.
This
month, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the impeachment process was
unconstitutional. Since it has the sole power to interpret the constitution,
that should have been the end of the matter. Instead, Parliament and the
president have flouted its authority. They have put the executive branch above
the law. It is not just the Colombo intelligentsia that is appalled. Foreign
watchdogs, the Commonwealth, and America, Britain and Canada have all voiced
alarm.
In
the short term, the government can probably get away with it. The president
still basks in the popularity of a man who won the war and ended the fighting.
Concerns about the way he did so are seen as squeamish foreign bleats. And the
economy is forecast to grow by nearly 7% in each of the next five years. The
lawyers who this week flew black flags and blew out symbolic candles will lack
supporters in Sri Lanka’s villages.
In
the long run, however, trashing the rule of law has costs. International
criticism, centred since 2009 on the failure to give any serious accounting of
possible war crimes, now has another angle: the integrity of Sri Lanka’s
democracy. Already, in Canada, for example, politicians are calling for a
boycott of the Commonwealth summit to be held in Colombo in November. Foreign
investors, too, may worry that the legal system has become, in effect, an arm
of government.
Judge not, that ye be not judged
The
administration’s supporters have likened Mrs Bandaranayake’s impeachment to
that of the Philippines’ chief justice last year. That was seen as both proving
the anti-corruption credentials of the president, Benigno Aquino, and removing
an obstacle to his reforms. But they may also have had in mind activist
judiciaries closer to home. India’s has intervened on issues ranging from
forest conservation to bus fuel. More tellingly, Pakistan’s has seen off one
dictator, Pervez Musharraf, and just this week ordered the arrest of a prime
minister of an elected government. Their Sri Lankan colleagues must envy them.
