{"id":41102,"date":"2015-02-01T13:57:02","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T19:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=41102"},"modified":"2015-01-31T11:55:11","modified_gmt":"2015-01-31T18:55:11","slug":"removing-chief-justice-by-the-cabinet-worse-than-removing-civic-rights-of-sirima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/02\/01\/removing-chief-justice-by-the-cabinet-worse-than-removing-civic-rights-of-sirima\/","title":{"rendered":"Removing Chief Justice by the Cabinet Worse Than Removing Civic Rights of Sirima"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Sri Lanka is in a dismal state of lawlessness under the Sirisena-Wickramasinghe interim government. The law has indeed gone to dogs! Chief Justice Mohan Pieris was properly appointed. There was absolutely no flaw in his appointment. If there was a flaw, why not the Supreme Court consulted in his removal? The decision to remove him was taken by the Cabinet which has no jurisdiction over appointing, removing and taking any other action on the Chief Justice.<\/p>\n<p>The despotic Sirisena-Wickramasinghe administration tried various tricks to get the Chief Justice removed. Firstly they threatened him with imprisonment over the alleged involvement in the concocted conspiracy. Failing that they tried to frame corruption charges against him. That too failed and rumours were spread that he was after a foreign posting to resign from the post. All failed. Then Asath Sally paid a needless visit to the Chief Justice. According to some reports he threatened him. Even if there was no threat, Sally has no business in the matter. Finally the Cabinet used coercion and force to remove him and reappoint Shirani who as planned resigned paving way for the intended Chief Justice. If the current de facto Chief Justice has any professional decorum, he must resign forthwith and allow the de jure Chief Justice Mohan Pieris to resume work. However, that is not expectable in Sri Lanka under the sorry state of the law.<\/p>\n<p>This episode resembles the removal of civic rights (1980-1985) of Sirima Bandaranaike by the Jayawardana administration. That too was done without any judicial power. The Cabinet assumed judicial powers! The executive, the legislature and the judiciary are separated for a good reason. The Cabinet cannot assume all three powers and use it against political opponents.<\/p>\n<p>This is the worst despotic event that happened in Sri Lanka for over three decades. It marks the dangerous slide into the abyss of absolute dictatorship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dilrook Kannangara Sri Lanka is in a dismal state of lawlessness under the Sirisena-Wickramasinghe interim government. The law has indeed gone to dogs! Chief Justice Mohan Pieris was properly appointed. There was absolutely no flaw in his appointment. If there was a flaw, why not the Supreme Court consulted in his removal? The decision to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilrook-kannangara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}