{"id":80061,"date":"2018-08-09T11:19:27","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T18:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=80061"},"modified":"2018-08-09T15:19:48","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T22:19:48","slug":"contempt-of-court-robes-and-coats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/08\/09\/contempt-of-court-robes-and-coats\/","title":{"rendered":"Contempt of court, robes and coats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) Chief Ven. Galabodaatte Gnanasara Thera has been sentenced to jail for contempt of court. Opinion may be divided on the severity of the punishment\u201419 years RI to be served in six years\u2014but the fact remains that he committed a very serious offence and nothing could be cited in extenuation thereof.<\/p>\n

The convict is currently in hospital and his lawyers have said they will appeal against the judgement. The Court Appeal, which sentenced him, has held that the implementation of the sentence will not be suspended pending the appeal. This is certainly bad news for the BBS chief.<\/p>\n

Nobody should be allowed to desecrate court houses. Those who cause affronts to the dignity of the judiciary, which is one of the main pillars of democracy, have to be severely dealt with. Somebody should have warned Gnanasara Thera of the consequences of his action before he obstructed the proceedings of the Homagama Magistrate\u2019s Court in 2016.<\/p>\n

The Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) evinced a keen interest in Ven. Gnanasara\u2019s case and went so far as to offer its services to the court as an amicus curiae. Its efforts to safeguard the dignity of the judiciary and judicial independence are to be highly appreciated. It has helped remind one and all that a person cannot be above the law simply because he happens to wear the saffron robe, and both the laity and the clergy are equal before the law. That done, the task before the BASL is to ensure that the members of the black-coated fraternity are also not allowed to get away with the offence of misbehaving in courts.<\/p>\n

It is said that the law must apply to each and every citizen equally. If so, contempt of court charges must be brought against all those responsible for running riot in court houses and insulting and threatening judges. The law must not be selectively enforced if the people are not to lose their faith therein.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the BASL did not take up cudgels for the judiciary on Nov. 18, 2011, when the judges who found former Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka guilty in the White Flag case and sentenced him to jail were threatened in open court. When the judgement was given all hell broke loose in the Colombo High Court with some lawyers going berserk; they smashed up court furniture in protest against the sentencing of the General and hurled raw abuse at the judges including a woman. They also openly threatened the beleaguered judges, whom the police had to remove to safety. They brought the legal profession into disrepute and created a very bad precedent. If some of them had been arrested and prosecuted, perhaps, Gnanasara Thera would have been wary of doing what he did about four and a half years later in Homagama.<\/p>\n

Strangely, the ardent champions of judicial independence, who take to the streets at the drop of a hat, chose to remain silent on the despicable incident in the Colombo High Court presumably for political reasons. Those culprits should also have been charged under the Offences against Public Property Act as well for damaging the court furniture. Is it that they were let off the hook because they were wearing black coats? Are lawyers above the law?<\/p>\n

Let the BASL, which, sadly, blotted its copybook through its inaction, be urged to have the 2011 incident in the Colombo High Court probed. Better late than never. After all, instances of corruption, abuse of power and violence under the previous regime are currently being investigated and arrests made\u2014and rightly so. The aforesaid incident should be similarly treated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) Chief Ven. Galabodaatte Gnanasara Thera has been sentenced to jail for contempt of court. Opinion may be divided on the severity of the punishment\u201419 years RI to be served in six years\u2014but the fact remains that he committed a very serious offence and nothing could be cited in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80061","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=80061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}