{"id":82896,"date":"2018-11-07T14:49:55","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T21:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=82896"},"modified":"2018-11-07T14:49:55","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T21:49:55","slug":"cornermen-as-referees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/11\/07\/cornermen-as-referees\/","title":{"rendered":"Cornermen as referees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial -Courtesy The Island\u00a0<\/b><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

November 7, 2018, 10:18 pm<\/span>
\nThe first step in treating a seriously ill patient is diagnosing his or her disease. He or she has to be rushed to hospital and nowhere else. Nothing is stupider than to consult anyone other than a qualified doctor on his or her condition. Likewise, a country\u2019s political ills, caused by constitutional ambiguities, should be identified properly before remedies are adopted; the only institution which is qualified and empowered to handle this task is the apex court.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, where the current crisis situation in this country is concerned, the Supreme Court has been totally ignored. Political leaders including the President, lawyers, the media, civil society groups or foreign diplomats and the Speaker have no authority to interpret the Constitution. They can shout for or against the recent change of government till they are blue in the face, but their views lack legal validity.<\/p>\n

The present crisis situation has triggered a flurry of diplomatic activity in Colombo. Foreign envoys, representing powerful nations, are acting as if they thought the clash between the UNP and the SLFP-SLPP alliance could lead to a world war unless nipped in the bud. They are meeting both sides to the conflict, either openly or on the sly, and some of them have gone so far as to make public statements, suggesting solutions. The question is whether such actions will be allowed in other countries which cherish their sovereignty and are even ready to fire nukes to protect it.<\/p>\n

If the US happens to experience a constitutional issue, will it allow the Russian ambassador, or any other foreign envoy in Washington for that matter, to run around like a headless chicken, giving his opinion thereon and telling the White House or the Congress what to do? A Sri Lankan military attache had to be recalled from London for making what came to be known as a throat-slitting gesture to a group of LTTE activists, who were protesting near the Sri Lankan High Commission. What would happen if a Sri Lankan diplomat ever tried to tell Prime Minister Theresa May how to handle Brexit or tackle the issue of British MPs refusing to eat halal meat?<\/p>\n

Curiously, none of the overly concerned diplomats weeping buckets for Sri Lanka\u2019s democracy have urged the warring parties to invoke the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court over the constitutional issues underlying the current political crisis.<\/p>\n

The ongoing crisis management process, where various persons are trying to resolve the present crisis without moving the Supreme Court, is like performing a life-saving surgery without a surgeon. We can only hope that the patient\u2014Sri Lanka\u2019s ailing democracy\u2014will survive the operation. The current political battle is also like a boxing match refereed by cornermen instead of a professional referee.<\/p>\n

In an interesting turn of events, two senior parliamentary officials are reported to have said they will abide by the President\u2019s gazette in making arrangements for the reopening of Parliament on Nov. 14. Speaker Karu Jayasuriya has declared that he does not recognise the new government until and unless it proves it has a majority in the House, and, in the meantime he will stick to the pre-Oct. 26 status in the House. Here is a situation where the Speaker refuses to follow a presidential directive, but the parliamentary staff has chosen to do otherwise! What will be the Speaker\u2019s reaction?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the UNP and the SLFP-SLPP combine should not lose sight of the danger of seeking help from external forces. There is said to be no such thing as a free lunch. Foreign help for the parties embroiled in the ongoing power struggle does not come without strings attached. Whichever side emerges victorious, the country will be the loser in that it will have to divest itself of an airport or a port or a container terminal or another section of its oil tank farm in the East or vast extents of land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial -Courtesy The Island\u00a0 November 7, 2018, 10:18 pm The first step in treating a seriously ill patient is diagnosing his or her disease. He or she has to be rushed to hospital and nowhere else. Nothing is stupider than to consult anyone other than a qualified doctor on his or her condition. Likewise, a […]<\/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-82896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82896","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=82896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}