by The Sri Lanka Study Circle
Petitioner G L Peiris’ Intervention in Court Acknowledging that
the Port City Bill was Unconstitutional while Peiris Continued to Assure the
Cabinet, the Parliament and the People that it was Constitutional
/Contd from Part 2
Were you, Mr. de Livera, a
willing accessory to Prof Peiris’ chicanery?
Prof G L Peiris’ conduct was
bizarre, to say the least. And, Mr. de Livera, so was yours.
Prof Peiris was in total
agreement with your opinion that the ‘Port City Bill’ was Constitutional when
he, along with others, voted in favour of the Bill at the critical Cabinet
meeting and continued to hold that view on 08 Apr 21 when the Bill was tabled
in Parliament and, even thereafter till about 19 Apr 21, the day the Court sat
to deliberate on the petitions submitted.
G L Peiris’ volte-face in Court
On 19Apr 21 or
thereabouts, Prof Peiris indicated that he entertained seemingly serious doubts
about your opinion on the Bill; he did a volte-face when he conveyed to the
Court, as an intervenient petitioner, that he did not agree with the Attorney
General’s opinion on the Bill and considered amendments to the Bill vital, to
protect the Constitution from being violated.
Did Prof Peiris communicate
with you his reservations, about your opinion on the Bill?
Prof Peiris came to Court,
armed with copies of the Bill and the Constitution and a battery of private
lawyers in tow; it was revealed during the Court proceedings that the Bill had
seriously violated the Constitution in over 25 instances!!
Did Prof Peiris keep the
President informed?
What was it that seemingly
prompted Prof Peiris to reverse-course his thinking? When did that mental
metamorphosis take place?
Or, was this ‘change of mind’ a
part of an overall strategy and were you, Mr. de Livera, a cog in that strategy?
An important question begs an
answer. Did Prof Peiris – the Chairman of the SLPP – keep the Head of the
Cabinet (the President) informed about his ‘change of mind’ and about his
proposed course of action?
If the President had concurred
with Prof Peiris should not the Bill have been withdrawn?
If the Professor had indeed
informed the President, and the President had concurred with the Professor’s new
point of view, should not the procedure, that should have been followed, be
vastly different from the one that was pursued?
Should not the Speaker have
been informed, the Bill withdrawn and the matter of ‘withdrawal’ communicated
to Court?
Ramifications of withdrawing
the Bill
If the Bill had been withdrawn,
would it be incorrect to say that there would have been no Court hearing and
the Government would have been compelled to re- table an amended Bill in
Parliament, incorporating all the amendments and changes as suggested by the
Professor?
In those circumstances, would
not the people have been afforded an opportunity to challenge the ‘amended’
Bill in Courts, if the need arose?
Professor Peiris deals a
telling blow to Democracy?
In the light of Prof Peiris
coming in as an intervenient petitioner, many ask the question, Was Prof
Peiris subverting the democratic concept of ‘Separation of Powers’ and paving a
path for the Judiciary to encroach on the turf of the Legislature?”
Was the Professor attempting to
mute the voice of the Legislature and were you not, Mr. de Livera, an important
link in that strategy?
‘Separation of Powers’ is a
universally accepted democratic norm wherein the three arms of Government -the
Legislature, the Judiciary and the Executive – have been Constitutionally
delegated the power of the people, to perform on their behalf, clearly defined
tasks.
The three arms of Government
are independent of each other and are coequal.
Under normal convention, it is
the preserve of the Legislature to make and amend laws while the preserve of
the Judiciary is to interpret laws.
In a landmark case, John Jay,
America’s first Chief Justice clearly clarified the role of the Court when he
said, The Court does not give advisory opinions; rather, its function is
limited only to deciding specific cases”.
‘Separation of Powers’ is an
inbuilt safety mechanism for the protection of the people against misuse and
abuse of their power by any one of the three arms of Government.
Had the Government taken the
course of action, which as constructed in this letter, it rightfully should
have, would not much of the debate and argument on the Bill been rightly confined
to the Legislature?
But, in the Legislature the
debate was restricted to just two days.
The Court hearings lasted five
days.
Again, would it not have been
from the Legislature that amendments would then have originated?
And, would not this process
have prevented Parliament being reduced to a virtual cut-and-paste shop?
What happened to Sri Lanka’s
Parliament, was indeed unique and sad.
Of course, the exercise of
withdrawing a Bill, re-drafting a fresh Bill in its place and re-tabling it in
Parliament would not have taken place in a day or two.
As far as the people are
concerned, the Port City Bill could have waited that time.
But did those, representing the
people have sufficient time?
What was the urgency and whose
was the urgency?
Secret pledges made by
politicians to foreign parties in undisclosed Treaties?
Global think tanks assert that
there has been a recent trend for Governments to make illicit pledges,
secretly, to foreign donors; these unauthorised pledges are written into undisclosed
Treaties and Agreements.
According to these
think-tankers these donors show a pronounced disrelish for these
unconstitutional pledges to be made public.
The Politicians, to fulfil
their criminal pledges to foreign donors and to maintain credibility with them,
attempt to unobtrusively push these pledges – hidden away in nooks and crannies
of Bills – through
Acts of Parliament.
Were any pledges, contravening
the Constitution and made by the Government to foreign parties in yet
undisclosed Treaties and Agreements, included in the Port City Bill?
Were their time stipulations
laid down in those ‘secret’ and illegal pledges?
In the context of the yet
undisclosed contents of these Treaties and Agreements, would it be unreasonable
to conclude that this could well explain the stealth, duplicity and urgency of
the Government to sneakily attempt passing the original Port City Bill?
Mr. de Livera, were there
unconstitutional pledges in any of the yet-to-be-seen Agreements?
Were any of these pledges ‘hidden’ away in the Bill that
was originally tabled in Parliament?
Were any of these
unconstitutional pledges found in any of the 25 clauses of the Bill that were
determined by the Court to violate the Constitution?
Mr. de Livera, could you please
make available to the public, the contents of all the Sri Lankan Treaties and
Agreements between India, America and China since 2009?
If the President did not concur
should not Prof Peiris have been sacked immediately?
On the other hand, if the
Professor had not communicated his ‘new’ opinion and his intended course of
action to the President or if the President, on being so informed by the
Professor, did not concur, should not Prof Peiris have been stripped of his Cabinet
Portfolio, sacked from the Party and booted out of Parliament for his
irresponsible conduct?
‘Cabinet-Collective-Responsibility’
is a convention in Parliamentary democracy; members of the cabinet must
publicly support all governmental decisions made in Cabinet, even if they do
not privately agree with them. If a member of the Cabinet wishes to openly
object to a Cabinet decision, then he is obliged to resign from his position in
the Cabinet.
Prof Peiris neither resigned
nor was he sacked
Prof Peiris should either have
resigned or been sacked. In either instance he should not be in the Cabinet.
But, in this instance, he continues to remain in the Cabinet.
What does this suggest?
Does this not strongly suggest
that the President and Prof Peiris had, in cahoots, engaged in some type of
political skullduggery and that you were an integral cog in that plot?
Single-mindedness to surrender
Sri Lanka’s Sovereignty and National Security?
When the Court determined, in
no uncertain terms, that the Bill touted as Constitutional by the Government
was indeed absolutely unconstitutional, when the Court determined that in eight
of the twenty-five instances identified as unconstitutional, a referendum was
required and when the Government used devious means to have the Bill
unobtrusively passed in Parliament with all the dangerous violations to the
Constitution in place, does it not suggest that the President and Prof Peiris
were willing to sacrifice and imperil Sri Lanka’s Sovereignty, Security and Unity?
This construct is reinforced
when on the same day, 19 Apr 21, the President’s Secretary, Mr. P B
Jayasundera, also challenged the Bill in Courts, as an intervenient petitioner!
Mr. de Livera, would you admit that
you are at the Centre of some duplicitous period of Sri Lanka’s history having
issued a spurious opinion that the Bill was constitutional?
/ to be contd
