The ruling party submits a motion to impeach the chief justice
By The Economist | COLOMBO
SRI LANKA’s ruling party has submitted a motion to impeach the chief justice. The move came on November 1st, after weeks of public discord between the president and Shirani Bandaranayake, the country’s most senior judge and the first female head of its Supreme Court. The next day America’s state department used the opportunity to worry aloud about the independence of Sri Lanka’s judiciary.
The current dispute is being described as a showdown between the government and the Supreme Court. A veteran newspaper editor was one among many to hope aloud that sanity be allowed to prevail. In his view while the battle is unlikely to have any victors, “the first casualty will be the country’s stability”.
Five MPs delivered the petition to Chamal Rajapaksa, the speaker of parliament and the eldest brother of the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Chamal’s office promptly released pictures of the event. The impeachment bid was then announced at two press conferences. But despite repeated questioning by journalists, government representatives refused to specify the charges against Mrs Bandaranayake (pictured to the right).
One minister cited “official and personal misconduct”. Another said the judiciary had lately “overstepped its limits” and impinged on the supremacy of parliament. The executive, legislature and judiciary are supposed to work in harmony, he stressed. That wasn’t the case however, according to him, and it was all the judiciary’s fault.
It is remarkable that only 117 of the ruling coalition’s 161 parliamentary members had signed the impeachment motion, as of November 1st. This is a sufficient majority—the speaker may treat it as valid with as few as 75 signatures—but it could indicate that the decision to oust the chief justice was not unanimous. Some MPs, mostly leftist coalition partners, have said they opposed it.
Trouble had been brewing for months. In September, the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) turned down a summons to meet Mahinda Rajapaksa. When the president’s secretary telephoned the commission, he was told to send a written invitation specifying reasons for the discussion.
If that weren’t cheeky enough, Manjula Tillekeratne, the JSC secretary, then issued a press statement—an unprecedented occurrence in the 40-year history of the commission—which alleged that there were efforts afoot to destroy the independence of the judiciary. The statement didn’t name anyone, but its aspersions were clear enough.
The JSC comprises the chief justice, who serves as its chair, and two other Supreme Court judges. It is tasked with appointing, transferring and dismissing judges and other court officials. The president claimed he had wanted to discuss budgetary matters with the commissioners. Senior lawyers say it was more likely that he wanted to question them about the suspension of a certain district-court judge, who was known to be close to the powerful Rajapaksa clan.
Then in October, four unidentified men assaulted Mr Tillekeratne as he waited in his car for his children to finish their tennis lessons. The attack was roundly condemned. District and magistrate court judges went on strike for two days in protest. Hundreds of lawyers and other sympathisers demonstrated.
Observers say these incidents are only symptoms of a deeper problem—something that seems, quite possibly, to be bound up in a personal disagreement between Mrs Bandaranayake and the president. Once they had got along just fine but now they couldn’t stand each other. As one journalist asked at a briefing, what went wrong? (That question, too, went unanswered).
Mr Rajapaksa appointed Mrs Bandaranayake as the chief justice in May 2011. Her appointment came a year after he named her husband, Pradeed Kariyawasam, chairman of the state-owned National Savings Bank (NSB). It was Mr Kariyawasam’s second high-profile government job in the Rajapaksa administration. At the time Mrs Bandaranayake disregarded criticism that this amounted to a conflict of interest.
Mr Kariyawasam resigned in May 2012 over a questionable share transaction carried out while he was NSB chairman. The Bribery Commission, appointed by the president, fast-tracked the investigation. On October 25th, the commission filed an action in court accusing Mr Kariyawasam of having caused the government millions of rupees in losses (tens of thousands of dollars), through the unlawful purchase of shares in a finance company.
The impeachment motion followed. The speaker has now to decide whether there is a prima facie case against the chief justice. If he chooses to allow the petition, he could either appoint a parliamentary committee to probe the allegations, or put it to debate. A simple majority in the 225-seat legislature will carry the motion. The ruling coalition has more than two-thirds control.
The speaker is already annoyed with Mrs Bandaranayake. On October 9th, he ruled that the Supreme Court had violated the constitution by the manner in which it had conveyed its decision on a controversial bill to parliament. Instead of sending the documents to him directly, he complained, the court had delivered them to the secretary-general of parliament.
It is unlikely, therefore, that the speaker will throw out the motion. Mrs Bandaranayake also shows no signs of backing down. Although she has not spoken publicly, her son, Shaveen Bandaranayake, wrote an open letter to the media.
His mother, Mr Bandaranayake said, is not the kind of person to waver or change under pressure or intimidation. Too bad for her then that—to judge by his past behaviour—this is just the kind of “impudence” for which Mr Rajapaksa, the president, has no patience.
Update, November 5th, 12pm GMT: The highest Buddhist prelates in the country (they head their religion’s local “chapters”) wrote to the president on November 5th, asking him to reconsider the decision to impeach Mrs Bandaranayake (in English, at 03:15). Their intervention into national politics is highly unusual.
