{"id":47300,"date":"2015-08-25T15:53:54","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T21:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=47300"},"modified":"2015-08-24T15:27:41","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T22:27:41","slug":"has-sirisena-dug-his-road-to-the-supreme-court-to-be-doomed-for-gross-violation-of-human-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/08\/25\/has-sirisena-dug-his-road-to-the-supreme-court-to-be-doomed-for-gross-violation-of-human-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Sirisena Dug His Road to the Supreme Court to be Doomed for Gross Violation of Human Rights?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Gandara John<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n

With the winners and losers at the recently concluded elections announced, Sirisena immediately set about to disenfranchise nearly five million UPFA voters, by inserting fresh names in the UPFA National List.<\/p>\n

And the fresh names on the list also included seven who had been rejected outright by the UPFA voters.<\/p>\n

Millions of voters reposed their faith in the UPFA in the hope that the United People\u2019s Freedom Alliance would form a government that would safeguard the sovereignty of the country or, if not the government, would form a strong opposition in Parliament that would thwart the conspiracy that they strongly believe has been hatched to barter away the sovereignty of the people.<\/p>\n

Assuming the election to be genuine the UPFA voters made their choice in voting for their team; their team choice included the list of names on the National List which they found attractive; they believed that those persons on that list would never betray their country.<\/p>\n

And while making that choice the near five million of UPFA voters, by choice, rejected outright several UPFA candidates.<\/p>\n

Acting like a potty dictator in a banana republic Sirisena slashed the National List violating the Human Rights of a 5 million voters enunciated in and protected by the International Covenant on \u2018Civil and Political Rights\u2019 to which Sri Lanka is a signatory.<\/p>\n

By substituting a fresh list of names in the National List of the UPFA and including in that list UPFA candidates totally rejected by UPFA voters, Sirisena was making the election a travesty of democracy.<\/p>\n

Sirisena, consumed by an indefinable anger and acting irrationally, badly dented the suffrage of the people. Sirisena leaves himself wide open to be hauled before the Supreme Court for the gross violation of Human Rights of 5 million people.<\/p>\n

Sirisena\u2019s conduct also gives just cause for the validity and genuineness of the Elections to be challenged.<\/p>\n

Article 25 of the \u2018International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1976\u2019 paraphrased reads, Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity to vote at genuine elections <\/em>which shall be by universal and equal suffrage guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Surprisingly, the Commissioner General of Elections who thrives in the spotlight of the media was hoarsely silent on this body blow to democracy in Sri Lanka; so were the usually vociferous NGOs and the election monitors paid to pontificate.<\/p>\n

Sirisena\u2019s bizarre conduct was preceded by a bout of equally aberrant behavior; in the week before the election he unilaterally sacked the Secretaries of the UPFA and the SLFP and 25 members of the SLFP Central Committee; on 13 Aug 15 he sent an urgent letter to Mahinda Rajapakse which hit the headlines even before it could reach the recipient.<\/p>\n

The strongly worded letter was contrived to reduce the vote bank of the UPFA; all this at the height of the election campaign when his actions would have earned a \u2018normal\u2019 person prosecution and imprisonment \u00a0for the violation of election laws.<\/p>\n

One of the major concerns of the voters at this election was the quality of the persons representing them in Parliament; the UPFA voters used great discretion in rejecting the undesirables at the time of voting.<\/p>\n

Sirisena however emasculated and enfeebled the voters by dictatorially reversing the decision of the voters and depriving them of their sovereign right to choose their representatives as they deem fit.<\/p>\n

Sirisena\u2019s motive is very clear. He, the ship\u2019s captain if he ever were one, is steering his ship towards the rocks to compel those who would not abandon ship to jump ship or be wrecked<\/p>\n

The Election has turned out to be a diabolical exercise in stifling democracy in the country. Power is heady and has already inebriated Sirisena. Democracy is at a low ebb. Is Sri Lanka slipping into a dictatorship or will the Supreme Court be Sri Lanka\u2019s saving grace?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Gandara John With the winners and losers at the recently concluded elections announced, Sirisena immediately set about to disenfranchise nearly five million UPFA voters, by inserting fresh names in the UPFA National List. And the fresh names on the list also included seven who had been rejected outright by the UPFA voters. Millions of voters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47300","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=47300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}