Editorial

Poverty, pledges and dangers

Published

6 years ago

2020/07/27

* Monday 27th July, 2020

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa has undertaken to rid the Colombo city of slums and shanties by implementing housing projects for the low-income groups. We have heard this promise before. The late President Ranasinghe Premadasa was the first to pledge to do so. He, in fact, made a serious effort to help the urban poor, but more than one half of the people in Colombo are said to be living in slums and shanties. Successive governments have adopted densification by way of a solution, built some multi-storey apartment complexes and moved some of the poor there, ignoring the fact that slum and shanty dwellers come in ceaseless waves.

Some governments have, in their wisdom, resettled sections of the urban poor in suburbs to develop shanty areas in Colombo, and these new settlements have become hotbeds of violence and drugs. The Badowita and Werahera wattes serve as examples.

The most effective way to solve the problem of slums and shanties is to reduce urban poverty while new housing projects are implemented for the poor and the factors that cause the migration of the rural poor to peri-urban areas and/or cities eliminated. A multi-pronged strategy is called for. Otherwise, efforts to prevent the expansion of the poor quarters of the city and tackle the problems associated with the urban sprawl are bound to fail.

Meanwhile, the problem of slums and shanties in urban and semi-urban areas will take a turn for the worse if plans currently under to pave the way for the acquisition of land by multinational corporations reach fruition. When neo-colonial forces cause dispossession among rural communities in the developing world in the name of economic development on various pretexts to further their geo-strategic goals, the rural poor, especially farmers, who lose their lands and livelihoods are left with no alternative but to migrate to cities. This kind of unplanned urbanisation gives rise to the proliferation of slums and shanties. This is why moves being made to privatise the state-owned land and facilitate the sale of rural land to western multinational corporations through various compacts have to be defeated.

The SLPP, which is seeking a popular mandate to retain state power and amend the Constitution ought to reveal its position on the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact. Its leaders are blowing hot and cold on it.

The US-based Oakland Institute has, in its recent report titled, Driving Dispossession: The Global Push to ‘unlock the Economic Potential of Land’, warned that MCC could potentially shift millions of hectares of land into private control. It has pointed out that the US is ‘a key player in an unfettered offensive to privatise land around the world via US blockchain corporation, government agencies and the World Bank’.

In Sri Lanka, the MCC, a US government entity, is targeting state land—it intends to map and record up to 67 percent of the country to “promote land transactions that could stimulate investment and increase its use as an economic asset,” says the Oakland Institute, which has conducted case studies in Sri Lanka, Brazil, Ukraine, Zambia, Papua New Guinea and Myanmar.

It is against this backdrop that the on-going project to digitise land records, in this country, should be viewed. The agriculture sector has been neglected, and farmers find it difficult to recover even production costs. When the project aimed at the commodification of land reaches completion, these cultivators in dire financial straits can be enticed into selling their lands for a song so that multinational corporations can acquire them through their fronts. There is the danger of such dispossessed people becoming destitute and migrating to urban centres for want of a better alternative.

Let the political leaders who promise deliverance to the urban poor be urged to desist from being party to the ongoing efforts to dispossess the rural people in the name of ‘unlocking the economic potential of land’.

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Editorial

Crimes punished and unpunished

Published

8 hours ago

2026/09/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

Thursday 24th September, 2026

Tuesday (22) was a news-packed day. It saw a string of coincidences of judicial significance. Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne announced, in Parliament, the much-awaited Supreme Court determinations on the 22nd Constitutional Amendment Bill (22A), the Judicature (Amendment) Bill, and the Anti-Corruption (Amendment) Bill; the President’s Office announced that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake had recommended two High Court judges for appointment to the Court of Appeal and made three High Court appointments, and the Colombo Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar delivered its verdict in the Easter Sunday terror attacks case. The controversy over 22A was buried in a torrent of news, so much so that one wondered whether these coincidences were even contrived.

After a marathon trial, which lasted about five years, the Colombo Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar, which was appointed in 2021, convicted 15 out of 24 accused and sentenced them to rigorous imprisonment, ranging from 200 years to 260 years. It acquitted and released the remaining nine accused. The court also ordered the confiscation of movable and immovable property of all 15 convicts.

The Trial-at-Bar verdict must have brought some relief to the survivors of the Easter Sunday carnage, their families and the campaigners for justice. Nothing, however, can compensate for the precious lives lost in the terror attacks and the suffering endured by those who were injured and their families.

Curiously, former IGP Pujith Jayasundera and former Defence Secretary Hamasiri Fernando have been sentenced to death for failing to act on intelligence warnings about impending Easter Sunday terror attacks while 15 persons convicted on specific charges, including murder, conspiracy to commit terrorism, and firearms/explosives offences, have been sentenced to rigorous imprisonment. Jayasundera and Fernando are fortunate that there is a moratorium on capital punishment in this country, where no judicial executions have been carried out since 1976.

It will be interesting to see the reaction of the Attorney General’s Department to the acquittals in the Easter Sunday attacks case. The Attorney General (AG) has challenged acquittals in several high-profile cases. Notable examples include the Nadarajah Raviraj assassination case, where the AG appealed against the acquittal of five accused; the Court of Appeal in March 2026 set it aside and ordered a retrial, and the Easter Sunday attacks cases involving Fernando and Jayasundara, where the AG successfully appealed against their acquittals, leading the Supreme Court to order that their defences be heard and the cases retried. The AG successfully appealed against the initial 12-year sentence in the Royal Park murder case, leading the Court of Appeal to upgrade the conviction to murder and impose the death penalty. In the Khuram Shaikh murder case, the prosecution challenged some aspects of the High Court judgment. These cases illustrate that an acquittal does not necessarily bring criminal proceedings to an end where the prosecution has a statutory right of appeal.

It will be a huge challenge to trace all assets of the 15 convicts in the Easter Sunday carnage case, for they may have been transferred before and after the terror strikes. One may recall that suspected drug dealer Shiran Basik’s father was recently arrested over a police investigation into illegally acquired assets. The police have identified Basik’s properties in various places. Will they make a similar effort to trace the assets of the Easter Sunday terror convicts and the National Thowheed Jamaath bombers who blew themselves up in the 2019 attacks?

The Catholic Church deserves praise for its relentless pursuit of justice. Its example is worthy of emulation. Justice must be sought for all victims of terror. There is a campaign seeking justice for the victims of war in the North and the East, and its focus is on the alleged killings and disappearances blamed on the military. The Chemmani mass grave has received international attention.

Likewise, justice must be sought for the victims of LTTE terrorism, the JVP’s terror campaign (1987-89) and brutal counter-terror operations against the JVP. The incumbent government led by the JVP pledged to launch a probe into the Batalanda torture chamber, where a large number of JVP activists and suspects were allegedly killed in the late 1980s. In 2025, the Batalanda Commission Report was debated in Parliament for the first time, some 25 years after it was presented as a Sessional Paper. The government said the report would be referred to the Attorney General for legal advice. Nothing has since been heard of the report or the AG’s opinion or the second phase of the debate.

There is a long-forgotten massacre. In June 1990, the LTTE executed about 600 policemen who surrendered in the Eastern Province on the orders of the Premadasa government. This massacre, too, must be probed. As President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has rightly pointed out, there is no limitation period for serious crimes, such as murder. Strangely, the JVP-led government has not ordered a probe into the extrajudicial execution of its founder leader Rohana Wijeweera in 1989.

Editorial

Big Bad Bills

Published

1 day ago

2026/09/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Wednesday 23rd September, 2026

The JVP core of the NPP government makes no bones about its insatiable desire to go beyond governing the country and consolidate its grip on the state; this is something it sought to achieve through extra-parliamentary means on two previous occasions, but in vain. It is busy removing politico-legal obstacles in its path systematically in a bid to achieve its goal. It has apparently adopted the principle that the end justifies the means.

The 22nd Amendment (22A) drama has ended in an anti-climax. Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne has informed Parliament of the much-awaited Supreme Court (SC) determination that 22A can be passed with a two-thirds majority, and there is no need for a referendum. The SC determination must have strongly resonated with the proponents of the controversial Bill.

The text of the SC determination makes interesting reading. Yet some important questions raised by legal experts about 22A remain unanswered. They are bound to be taken up on the political front. The Opposition is going to hold a protest at the Polduwa Junction near Parliament tomorrow.

The JVP-NPP government is over the moon. It can now use its supermajority to steamroller 22A through Parliament. But trouble is far from over. The controversial constitutional amendment will be in the people’s court. Big, bad Bills become law in this country, where politics takes precedence over everything else, as evident from the enactment of the 13th Amendment, the 18th Amendment, and the 20th Amendment. Judicial sanction, conditional or otherwise, and parliamentary approval do not, by themselves, confer legitimacy on questionable legislation. The Provincial Council Elections (Amendment) Bill of 2017 is also a case in point. It was subjected to SC review, but the legislation ultimately enacted, changing the electoral system and introducing a women’s quota, contained substantial Committee Stage amendments. It has since stood in the way of holding the PC elections, and even the chief architects of that bad law are now demanding that the PC polls be held under the previous electoral system.

The quality of any law depends not only on what it says but also on whether it is made transparently and consultatively with adequate scrutiny. If a law is perceived to be politically motivated, no amount of dressing up will make it legitimate in the eyes of the public or the international community.

Future governments that can muster two-thirds majorities will also be able to change the retirement ages of judges, according to the whims and fancies of their leaders. Sri Lanka’s Executive Presidents are driven by a desire to undermine the separation of powers and exercise control over the other branches of government. Zimbabwe has been down this road before.

Now that the government is in overdrive to increase the retirement ages of judges purportedly to clear huge case backlogs, it will come under pressure to adopt the same modus operandi to address delays in other state institutions, particularly the state universities. According to media reports quoting the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA), state universities are operating with only about 6,800 permanent academics though there is a requirement of 12,000–13,000. FUTA has warned that students from two earlier batches are still awaiting enrolment, with the admission of the 2025 GCE A/L batch potentially being delayed by one to two years. State-run hospitals are also characterised by chronic delays, and the question is whether the government will increase the retirement ages of doctors as a solution.

Meanwhile, the SC has held that Clause 17 of the Anti-Corruption (Amendment) Bill is inconsistent with the Constitution, and it may become law only if passed with a special majority and approved by the people at a referendum. The government may consider this a blessing in disguise or otherwise. It now has an opportunity for political theatre. Its leaders, who needed a referendum on 22A like a hole in the head, might find it difficult to resist the temptation to place the Anti-Corruption Bill, or at least Clause 17, before the people at a referendum so that they can mount soapboxes, grab bullhorns and yell, condemning their political opponents as corrupt and drumming up support for the Bill in a bid to gain political mileage and shore up the image of their government.

The current JVP leaders ought to tender a posthumous apology to President J. R. Jayewardene for the terror campaign waged against his government in the late 1980s. They are now emulating the Old Fox and apparently cannot let go of the executive presidency, which they once condemned as a wellspring of evil.

Editorial

Trouble beginning in earnest

Published

2 days ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

Tuesday 22nd September, 2026

Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne is expected to communicate the Supreme Court (SC) determination on the 22nd Constitutional Amendment (22A) Bill to Parliament shortly. All signs are that it will come as no surprise to legal experts and the discerning public. The process of hearing scores of petitions against 22A came under intense global scrutiny, with the impending SC determination arousing much interest among international jurists. It will be interesting to see their reaction when the determination is made public.

The Opposition is planning a protest against 22A near Parliament. It is now shifting the battle against 22A from the legal front to the political front. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has already embarked on a campaign to drum up support for his government as well as 22A. Propaganda war between the government and the Opposition is getting down and dirty, with reputations being dragged through the mud.

President Dissanayake recently created quite a stir when he revealed how he was going to turn 22A into law. Addressing an NPP rally in Kalutara, he said his government had a two-thirds majority in Parliament and could secure the passage of 22A. The Opposition lashed out at him, demanding to know how he could so confidently say that 22A would be passed with the government’s parliamentary majority alone, even before the SC determination was conveyed to the Speaker. One may recall that on a previous occasion, too, President Dissanayake drew heavy flak for making a prediction about the judgement in a case against a prominent Opposition figure.

In his Kalutara speech, the President went on to dismiss as baseless a claim in some quarters that he was planning to hold a referendum to do away with elections. Stressing that he would not do so and elections would be held, he said a referendum would divide voters into the Yes and No camps, but an election would help cause numerous splits in the Opposition, much to the advantage of the government. The subtext of his statement was that he was wary of holding a referendum.

After gazetting 22A, President Dissanayake declared that he would pull out all the stops to ensure its enactment and refused to hold stakeholder consultations, much less take dissenting views on board. The government’s position has been that there is no need for a referendum on 22A, which it says can be passed with only a two-thirds parliamentary majority. It has come under criticism from international organisations of judges and lawyers, including the International Association of Judges, LAWASIA, and the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association, with the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) leading the campaign against 22A from the front.

There have been several controversial constitutional amendments that did not survive the governments that introduced them although they passed muster with the apex court and received special majorities for enactment. This is something that all governments ought to bear in mind.

In 2010, the 18th Amendment (18A) was enacted to enhance the President’s executive powers and do away with the presidential term limit for the benefit of the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Legal experts argued that 18A had to be approved by the people at a referendum, but it was passed with only a two-thirds parliamentary majority. 18A lasted only a few years. Following the 2015 regime change, 19th Amendment eviscerated 18A.

The same fate befell the 20th Amendment (20A), which was enacted by the SLPP government during Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency to restore the executive powers taken away by the 19th Amendment and enable dual citizens to enter Parliament, the main beneficiary being Basil Rajapaksa. The 21st Amendment rendered 20A hollow during the SLPP government itself.

Worse, the 13th Amendment, enacted in haste, plunged the country into a bloodbath, with the JVP unleashing terror in a bid to scuttle it in the late 1980s. The JVP-NPP government has learnt little from history.