Monday 20th July, 2026

The Court of Appeal (CA) has granted bail to a man held on remand for about 15 years under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The CA overturned a Colombo High Court order refusing bail to the accused. Stressing that protracted pre-trial detention should not amount to punishment before conviction, and the presumption of innocence remains a cornerstone of criminal justice, the court ruled that there was an exceptional circumstance warranting the accused’s release on bail in keeping with an amendment introduced to the PTA in 2022. However, this amendment has not effectively diluted the draconian character of the PTA to make it rights-compliant; its sweeping powers leave room for abuse. A country needs anti-terror laws to ensure national security and public safety, but they must necessarily conform to international human rights standards and best practices.

It is sad but true that successive governments, bent on suppressing democratic dissent, have manipulated the legal system to ‘punish’ their political opponents by having them remanded or detained for extended periods. They unashamedly invoke the PTA, the Offences against Public Property Act, etc., for this purpose. One can understand why dangerous criminals who pose a threat to public safety are detained for extended periods, but it defies comprehension why others, especially political activists, should be detained or held on remand indefinitely purportedly until the conclusion of investigations. The practice of the police arresting suspects even before investigations into complaints get underway in earnest to ascertain evidence, and having them remanded or detained for long periods, has severely eroded public confidence in the legal system. It must be discontinued forthwith.

In this country, detention is tantamount to punishment for all intents and purposes. Imagine being kept in an overcrowded, squalid prison, where sanitary facilities are scarce and inmates cannot sleep for want of space. Some remand prisoners are housed with convicts. They live in eternal fear of being assaulted or even killed. All 21 inmates killed during the recent riots at the Negombo Prison, which accommodated remand prisoners and convicts, were suspects, as we reported, quoting prison officers, last Wednesday (15). The majority of the injured inmates were also suspects. This alone is proof of the vulnerability of remand prisoners.

There is no gainsaying that Sri Lanka’s prison system is badly in need of a radical shake-up, which remains pie in the sky despite promises made by successive governments to introduce comprehensive prison reforms. The need for much more space and better facilities for the current prison population cannot be overstated. There are more than 41,000 prisoners at present although the prison system has a capacity to hold only 10,000 to 11,000 inmates, according to the government. The Negombo Prison, which was designed to accommodate about 650 prisoners, was holding around 2,400 inmates at the time of the recent riots. However, the physical development of prisons alone will not help evolve a lasting solution to the ever-worsening issue of overcrowding. It is imperative to formulate a comprehensive strategy to overcome the problem and adopt the modern methods already used by other countries.

One may recall that various alternative measures have been proposed, over the past so many years, to ease prison overcrowding due to pre-trial remand or detention. They include expanding bail, introducing electronic monitoring for those who pose no serious risks to the public. They are already used internationally, and Sri Lanka can adopt them easily by introducing necessary legal amendments.

What one gathers from the various views expressed by experts during the previous debates on prison reforms is that well-designed community sanctions can reduce reoffending more effectively than short jail terms. They make sense in that they help not only reduce prison overcrowding and escalating costs but also prevent those convicted for minor offences from networking with criminals in prisons and graduating to serious crimes.

Sri Lanka’s legal fraternity has woken up to threats to democracy and embarked on a campaign to neutralise them. The Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) is leading the battle against the incumbent government’s efforts to undermine democracy and judicial independence. It deserves praise for its laudable mission, whose success however hinges on the cooperation of all other stakeholders.

Former BASL President Saliya Pieris, speaking at the launch of Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne’s book, Constitutional Conversations, in Colombo on Thursday (16), inter alia, pointed out that democracy had to be protected from the elected representatives of people as well. He must have struck a responsive chord with the discerning public when he said democracy faced graver threats under governments with steamroller majorities.

The wellbeing of democracy is inversely proportional to the concentration of unchecked political power, as evident from the experience of countries like Sri Lanka, where legal and institutional constraints are absent or inherently weak and ineffective. However, a distinction has to be made between state capacity and arbitrary, unchecked state power. Mature democracies often combine extensive democratic freedoms with highly capable states, rather than weak ones, as some political scientists have argued.

So, one may say, with apologies to Shakespeare, the fault is neither in state capacity nor in our stars, but in ourselves and the legal and institutional safeguards in place to protect democracy. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has failed in his constitutional duty by leaving four vacancies each in the Supreme Court (SC) and the Court of Appeal (CA) unfilled for months, as legal experts have pointed out, but there is nothing that can be done to ensure that he does what the Constitution requires him to do. Who says the culture impunity came to an end with the 2024 regime change?

Mammoth parliamentary majorities not only undermine democracy but also become the undoing of the governments that command them. This has been Sri Lanka’s experience since 1970, when the SLFP-led United Front government secured a two-thirds majority (with the help of the JVP, which conducted its propaganda campaign). That administration bulldozed its way through and even extended its parliamentary term by two years. The UNP, which obtained a five-sixths majority at the 1977 general election, debilitated all legal and institutional constraints, and democracy suffered immensely under its rule as never before. Political violence and election malpractices came to be institutionalised. That regime made a general election disappear in 1982 with the help of a heavily rigged referendum. The SLFP-led UPFA government mustered a two-thirds majority after winning the 2010 general election and went to the extent of amending the Constitution to further the interests of the then Executive President by weakening the constitutional safeguards that had been introduced to ensure the independence of vital state institutions. The SLPP government, elected in 2020, abused its two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution to strengthen the executive presidency at the expense of democratic institutions. The arrogance of power made that regime impervious to public opinion and economic reality, and the economy went into a tailspin, leading to political upheavals. That supermajority turned out to be the SLPP government’s undoing as well as a curse for the country.

The JVP-led NPP, which capitalised on public anger and came to power on the back of a massive protest vote, in 2024, thinks no end of itself mainly because of its two-thirds majority. President Dissanayake has been accused of planning to amend the Constitution to increase the retirement ages of the superior court judges with an ulterior motive. He continues to ignore calls for abandoning his ill-conceived plan and filling the vacancies in the SC and the CA.

Democracy suffered extensive damage under previous governments with supermajorities, which were abused in every conceivable manner to advance the political agendas of the political leaders of the day. Now, another juggernaut is bearing down on democracy. The political Opposition is too pusillanimous to stand up to the powerful JVP-NPP government; its leaders bellow rhetoric but baulk at taking up the cudgels for democracy. Their bark is worse than their bite. Only a few individual Opposition politicians have had the courage to oppose the ongoing assault on democracy and educate the public on the excesses committed by the present-day leaders. As a result, the BASL, the independent media, and some civil society outfits have had to act as a countervailing force against the government, which is now doing exactly what it condemned previous governments for doing.

Saturday 18th July, 2026

US President Donald Trump has accused China of interfering in the 2020 US presidential election and alleged “shocking vulnerabilities” in American voting systems. Speaking from the White House on Thursday, he repeated unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and foreign meddling in the 2020 election, which he lost.

Trump claimed he had declassified hundreds of intelligence files which supported his claim that Beijing tried to sway the election in his rival, Joe Biden’s favour. However, the US intelligence agencies have concluded that China did not interfere in the 2020 election. One may recall that there were allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, which Trump won. After securing the presidency, Trump insisted that those allegations were false, politically motivated and an attempt to delegitimise his victory.

Trump’s allegation against China has come three months ahead of crucial US midterm elections, where the Republicans are expected to suffer a setback. Trump is doing everything in his power to prevent a situation that will make his position as a lame-duck President even weaker. So, it is only natural that he is concocting conspiracy theories and resorting to hard power projections, such as using military force, and economic coercion to influence other nations, in a bid to shore up the crumbling image of his government. However, it is doubtful whether his tactics will pay off.

Meanwhile, US Vice President JD Vance has accused a section of the Israeli government of trying to sway US public opinion against a peace deal to end the Iran war. He said so in an interview with a podcaster on Wednesday. Defending a deal that the US reached last month to end the war with Iran, Vance said, “I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there have been people within the Israeli government who are trying to, like, actually shift us away from that policy because they want to continue the military campaign,” according to media reports. Vance’s allegation followed a Time magazine story that a former Trump campaigner had been hired to influence US views of Israel and the Iran war. Vance’s allegation is damning; he has called the Israeli efforts “very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal”.

That Israel does not want the US to enter into a peace deal with Iran is obvious. It wants the US to go on attacking Iran until there is a regime change in Tehran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes no bones about the fact that he was not well-disposed towards the interim peace deal signed between the US and Iran. The resumption of hostilities must have gladdened his heart as well as those of all other hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv.

There is no way Israel can prevent the US from signing a peace agreement with Iran if President Trump so desires strongly. What has stood in the way of efforts to end the Iran war is Trump’s intransigence. Iran is not without blame, but the US is to be blamed more for the resumption of war. Trump knows he cannot go on attacking Iran indefinitely for economic and strategic reasons. The US weapons stockpiles have to be replenished, and the economic cost of war is escalating. The war has also driven oil prices and the cost of living high in the US, much to the consternation of the US public, the majority of whom are against the ongoing war, which they think Israel manoeuvred the Trump administration into. Trump only made a virtue of necessity when he agreed to a ceasefire, but wanted to end the war on his own terms; he failed because Iran did not give in to US pressure.

As for the aforesaid ‘conspiracies’ Trump is in a position to order a thorough probe into the alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 US election and get to the bottom of it, and instead of blaming Israel, Vance can ask his boss, Trump, to stop attacking Iran.