Sugath Kulatunga

It is an axiom that the three organs or pillars of any government are the executive, legislature, and the judiciary. For effective governance in a country all three organs must stand firm and support each other. In Sri Lanka the two organs of the executive and the legislature are in an existential crisis. It is not understood how the other organ has not shown any interest in this unprecedented crisis and the estrangement of the Executive and the legislature with the people.

In our neighbor India, the Indian Judiciary has developed a jurisprudence of the accountability of the state for constitutional and legal violations adversely affecting the interest of the public. Indian courts have used Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles of State Policy in the Indian Constitution to provide a framework for regulating relations between the state and its citizens. Under this framework Indian Courts have given decisions in cases pertaining to different kinds of entitlements and protections such as the availability of food, access to clean air, safe working conditions, political representation, affirmative action, anti-discrimination measures. In India, Courts have intervened when a power vacuum is created in the governance system due to the inaction and incompetence of any one organ of the government, which may cause disaster to the democratic set up of the country.

It is very relevant to the current crisis in Sri Lanka, that Indian Courts recognize the right of the people to live with human dignity and all that goes along with it,” including”the right to the basic necessities of life and also the right to carry on such functions and activities as constitute the bare minimum expression of the human self.”

Even in Sri Lanka when the State has acted against the good of the country our Courts have intervened to rectify the errors committed by the State as in the cases of the Eppawala Phosphate mining, case, Waters Edge, privatization of Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, Lanka Marine Service. The most important was the de-merging of North and East Provincial Councils.

So far the Parliament has not been able to seek a workable and an acceptable solution. At the same time the mayhem of demonstrations against the government continues. This will seriously affect the economy and particularly tourism.

It is the fervent hope of responsible citizens that the Supreme Court will suo motu intervene to settles this crisis before it ends up in a blood bath.