Saturday 26th September, 2026

The outcome of yesterday’s parliamentary vote on the 22nd Amendment (22A) to the Constitution came as no surprise. The ayes had it with a two-thirds majority. Now, the Speaker will sign the 22A bill into law posthaste, increasing the mandatory retirement ages of the judges of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. However, even a special majority cannot make a bad law good.

It was speculated in some quarters that some NPP MPs would break ranks and vote against 22A. There was no such rift in the ruling party yesterday. Not that every NPP MP is well-disposed towards the controversial amendment, but it is seldom that a government MP votes against a crucial bill. There have been crossovers in previous Parliaments but they were mostly due to internal clashes and competing ambitions rather than policy issues.

Only the naïve expected 22A to be placed before the people at a referendum. The government is wary of facing elections and doing everything in its power to delay the Provincial Council elections further. It would not have proceeded with 22A if it had had the slightest doubt that there would be a referendum. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has demonstrated a remarkable ability to make predictions about judicial decisions, much to the resentment of the Opposition. After all, he comes from the same district as Gnanakka, the go-to seeress for the leaders of the SLPP government––Anuradhapura.

Having failed to pressure the JVP-NPP government into deep-sixing 22A, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, Opposition political parties and some civil society outfits resorted to what may be described as moral suasion. They urged the MPs to vote according to their conscience. Politicians are known to act out of expediency, which takes precedence over everything else in politics. A wag says exhorting politicians to act according to their conscience in Parliament is like expecting chastity to be practised in a house of ill-fame.

The government is crowing about the passage of 22A, but trouble is far from over for it. 22A has become a rallying point for the Opposition. The SLPP put on a good show of strength a few weeks ago in Anuradhapura, and the SJB held a successful protest on Thursday near Parliament.

The Opposition is bound to expand its protests to cover other issues as well and tap public resentment to fuel its anti-government campaign. The government will find itself in a dilemma. Adopting coercive methods to suppress dissent are counterproductive, and leniency encourages the Opposition to intensify its protests.

The government has antagonised the legal fraternity that played a pivotal role in engineering the 2024 regime change. Doctors, university teachers and other professionals who threw their weight behind the JVP/NPP, facilitating its rise to power, are also on the warpath. Farmers are in a paddy, unable to sell their produce at reasonable prices, so much so that both the Minister of Agriculture and his deputy had to skip President Dissanayake’s inaugural farmers’ rally in Polonnaruwa a few weeks ago. It is unlikely that what the government has sought to achieve through 22A politically will help it consolidate its power if it fails to deliver and grant some tangible economic relief to the public.

Meanwhile, 22A has brought about a situation where both the government and the judiciary will be under intense international scrutiny. Zimbabwe has been down that road before. The JVP/NPP did not ask for a mandate to emulate Zimbabwe, did it?

Friday 25th September, 2026

The unfolding politico-legal scenario can be described as a bill parade. The government is apparently preoccupied with unveiling one questionable bill after another, the latest being the Protection of the State from Terrorism (PST) bill, which has just been gazetted. It is in a mighty rush to secure the passage of this bill. If only it acted with the same urgency to introduce a bill to amend the Provincial Council Elections Act and clear the way for the Election Commission to hold much-delayed Provincial Council polls.

Clausewitz famously described war as the continuation of politics by other means. Going by the JVP-led government’s determined efforts to enact a slew of new laws, amidst serious concerns expressed by critics over the Executive’s growing influence over the judiciary, one wonders whether the ongoing bill parade represents an attempt to pursue the JVP’s political strategy of perpetuating its rule by judicial means.

The government’s delivery on the economic front has been nothing out of the ordinary, while the tally of its unfulfilled promises is on the rise. The performance of the JVP/NPP on the political front has been par for the course, with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake himself having to travel across the country, addressing rallies and mostly repeating his election-time rhetoric, in a bid to drum up support for the government. It is therefore possible that the government has shifted its focus to the legal and institutional front as part of its strategy to consolidate its hold on power.

A close look at the PST bill reveals a clear legislative lineage. The PST has evolved through successive attempts to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), beginning with the 2018 Counter Terrorism Bill, followed by the 2023/24 Anti-Terrorism Bill. Most laws in this country are not totally devoid of some progressive features, but the devil, as always, is in the subtext. Nothing can be done about bad bills that pass muster with the judiciary. The 22nd Amendment (22A) is a case in point.

The definition of terrorism remains an unresolved issue. A counter-terrorism law should define terrorism narrowly and precisely. The definition of terrorism in the PST bill has left much to be desired, although the Government insists that safeguards will prevent legitimate political dissent, protests, industrial action, journalism and advocacy from being misconstrued as terrorist activities. It may be better structured than that in the PTA. But the devil, as always, is in the subtext.

Some other issues related to the PST bill are detention without charge, police powers for the military, and doubts about the practical enforceability of the promised safeguards. The proposed judicial oversight is not the same as the courts having sufficiently substantive powers to review and terminate unjustifiable detention rather than supervising the conditions and procedural continuation of detention. The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has previously called for detention orders to be subject to judicial oversight and for judges to have meaningful authority to grant bail. Such safeguards are necessary to prevent the abuse of anti-terror laws to deprive citizens of their fundamental and democratic rights.

It is hoped that the potential ill-effects of 22A, which critics see as part of a multi-pronged strategy to bring the judiciary under the Executive’s control, will not stand in the way of a proper judicial review of the PST bill. Anti-terror laws become a potent weapon in the hands of governments that fear losing their grip on power. Successive governments have abused the PTA to safeguard their interests through arbitrary arrests and prolonged detentions. There is no guarantee that the PST law will not meet the same fate under the incumbent government or its successors. Hence the need to ensure that the PST legislation will not go the way of the PTA.

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.