The Bar Association, in a letter dated 22 December, has asked President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to appoint a person with proven competence, integrity, and independence—who commands wide acceptance, within the Constitutional Council, as the Auditor General. BASL declared its opposition to appoint a partisan figure.

The following is the text of the BASL statement: “We wish to express our deep concern regarding the prolonged failure to appoint a permanent Auditor General following the retirement of the former Auditor General in April 2025. For a period exceeding ten months, this crucial office has remained vacant.

The Office of Auditor General, established under Article 153(1) of the Constitution, is of paramount importance for the functioning of all State Institutions and other entities as provided in Article 154 of the Constitution. The absence of a permanent Auditor General has serious implications for the effective functioning of the National Audit Office and for the accountability of State Institutions and other entities mandated under the Constitution.

The urgency of this appointment is heightened by the present circumstances. Sri Lanka is emerging from a financial crisis with the support of the Extended Fund Facility of the International Monetary Fund and other international agencies. In addition, the country is currently receiving foreign financial assistance in response to the disaster situation caused by Cyclone Ditwah. In this context, financial accountability and transparency of State Institutions are of paramount importance.

The BASL also notes that the person nominated so far by the President for the post of Auditor General has not gained the acceptance of the majority of the Constitutional Council.

It is therefore imperative that a candidate of proven competence, integrity, and independence—who commands wide acceptance within the Constitutional Council—is appointed, rather than a partisan figure. Such an appointment will strengthen confidence in the National Audit Office and ensure that the constitutional mandate of the Auditor General is fulfilled without compromise.

As an institution committed to upholding accountability and transparency in governance, the BASL respectfully urges Your Excellency to take immediate steps to appoint a permanent Auditor General under and in terms of Article 153(1) of the Constitution. This appointment is essential to safeguard the integrity of the National Audit Office and the confidence of both citizens and international partners in the financial governance of the State.”

The Fort Magistrate yesterday (23) issued a warrant for the arrest of Jaffna District MP Ramanathan Archchuna as he failed to appear in court during the hearing of a case against him for alleged obstruction of police duties.

This happened when the Fort Magistrate took up a case regarding an incident involving the MP and Fort police during a public demonstration in September this year.

Police said that at the time the MP was arrested on allegations of obstructing a police officer in the execution of their duties.

Collective for Social Media Declaration (CSMD) has strongly opposed the proposed Protection of the State from Terrorism Act, No. of 2026 (PSTA).

The following is the text of the statement issued by Sampath Samarakoon on behalf of CSMD: “The Protection of the State from Terrorism Act, No. of 2026 (PSTA) presents itself as an improvement on the existing Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). This framing obscures the reality that its core architecture, including administrative detention, military powers, proscription regimes, and broad speech offences, replicates the essential features that made the PTA objectionable for over four decades.

The Bill replicates the fundamental architecture that made the PTA objectionable. Rather than using the ordinary criminal law regime for terrorism offences alongside emergency powers when genuinely required, the PSTA creates parallel criminal jurisdictions with reduced safeguards and expanded executive authority. Its scheme maintains extraordinary arrest and detention powers, grants the Attorney General potentially coercive mechanisms to compel admissions without trial, and empowers the President, senior police officers, and the Defence Secretary to issue proscription orders, restriction orders, curfews, and prohibited place declarations with limited judicial oversight. As the title suggests, the Bill’s fundamental purpose is to protect the state rather than to protect civilians from violence, a framing that offers little resistance to treating public dissent, political disruption, and threats to political power as terrorism in themselves. Though the Bill includes carve-outs for protest and industrial action, these sit in tension with other provisions and may prove ineffective in practice.

Section 78 defines “confidential information” so broadly that it could capture online content, and social media posts documenting military checkpoints, photographs of army deployments during civilian protests, or tweets noting the presence of intelligence personnel at public events. Tamil civil society organisations, and activists documenting enduring militarisation in their communities face particular exposure. Section 15 criminalises failure to report information about terrorism offences with penalties of up to seven years imprisonment, placing journalists, lawyers, doctors, and religious figures in impossible positions where professional ethics conflict with criminal liability. This provision effectively conscripts recipients of information as state informants, creating a chilling effect on communication without requiring any technical interception.

Journalists, civil society activists, and ordinary social media users face particular exposure under this Bill. The predictable consequence is self-censorship driven by fear rather than any genuine security benefit. The Bill’s extended detention provisions, which permit up to two years of combined remand and detention without charge, provide a repressive mechanism for silencing dissent. Meanwhile, the surveillance and decryption powers granted under sections 53 and 55 threaten to eliminate private digital communication entirely, depriving citizens of secure channels for democratic dialogue and exposing them to monitoring that bears no reasonable relationship to legitimate counter-terrorism objectives.

We want to particularly stress the Bill’s impact on privileged, and encrypted communications, that go far beyond the PTA. Section 55 grants magistrates authority to order the unlocking of encrypted communications, yet assumes technical capability that simply does not exist with genuine end-to-end encryption (E2EE) systems. The extension of police powers to military personnel under section 19 creates a 24-hour window before handover to civilian authorities during which device contents could be accessed without procedural safeguards. Given documented patterns of abuse during military detention, including custodial torture, particularly affecting Tamil communities, the risk of coerced access to encrypted communications is not theoretical.

National security cannot serve as a blank cheque to erode democratic values. We urge the government to withdraw this Bill, engage in meaningful consultation with civil society, and affected communities, and develop fit-for-purpose legislation that meets international human rights standards while addressing legitimate national, and human security concerns.”