Features

The University College, Colombo,and going off to a British University

Published

3 years ago

2023/01/15

Excerpted from the Memoirs of a Cabinet Secretary by BP Peiris

A few months after leaving Royal, I entered our University College under the Principalship of Robert Marrs who lectured to us on Philosophy. I was then a first year Arts student. Professor Pakeman spoke on the British Constitution and Warden Stone of St Thomas’ on Latin and Greek, and Roman and Greek History.

But alas! My stay at University College was to he very short indeed – just two months. I lived at the Union Hostel at ‘Alcove’ in Turret Road. The warden was Mr C. Suntharalingam. I got precious little to eat, and it was no fault or negligence on the part of the warden. It was just bad manners on the part of the hostellers. I was always a bit late, about five minutes, for meals. We sat in messes of four. When we had egg curry for lunch, there were four eggs in a dish in each mess, similarly with prawn curry, there were sufficient prawns for four.

But when I came and sat down in my usual place, the egg, which was my portion, had gone; who took it, I was never able to find out; the prawns had all gone and I had only the gravy. At tea time, the butter and milk had all been consumed and I had to be satisfied with bread, jam and a cup of plain tea. At dinner it was the same, and this occurred day after day. The three others had no manners and no consideration for the fourth fellow who was a few minutes late.

I am not here condemning all the hostelers; there were well-mannered, well-behaved students. Unfortunately, I got into a bunch of greedy, voracious and selfish students, which made me extremely unhappy. We used sometimes to get parcels of fruits etc. from our parents -oranges, mangoes, mangosteens – which were much appreciated. When I received such a parcel, I always shared it with my friends. There was one student who locked up all the fruits he received in one of his drawers and never failed to take the key with him even when he went to the toilet!

As I said, I was very unhappy. It was not my idea, even as a young fellow, of what a University should or ought to be, and I told father so and suggested that he send me to England to study law. My father did not oppose the idea, but consulted Mr (later Sir) Susantha de Fonseka who readily acquiesced, and said it was a wise move. I had now to find a place in a college in Oxford, Cambridge, London or one of the other Universities.

Father accordingly went with me to Sir James Peiris, in his time President of the Cambridge Union and, at the time I went, Vice-President of the Legislative Council. Father made the mistake of starting the conversation saying that he had come to ask for a favour. Sir James was not exactly angry but looked very surprised that my father, who knew him so well, should make such an irregular request. Sir James “did not do favours” or abuse his position.

There was a look of disapproval on his face and my father hurried to tell him what the favour was – a letter from him to his College in Cambridge to secure me a place there. “Oh Edmund,” said Sir James, “if that is all, I shall gladly write.” Unfortunately for me, his College had no vacancies, and I joined the University of London. At one time I had received the princely allowance of five cents a day. Now I was to be sent, at 19, to England at seven pounds a week. It turned my head and made me nervous. I had never handled so much money before.

And now arose a problem. Father did not like my living in ‘digs’ in London. He wanted me to stay with an English family and enjoy good English home life. As the Mudaliyar of the district, he knew the Assistant Government Agent Mr E. T. Dyson, a good and kindly Christian gentleman. Dyson liked a simple life, and was a stranger to tobacco and drink. When father asked him whether he could find me a good home in England, he had said “Yes”. The lady (my good luck) happened to be holidaying at Peradeniya at the moment, and father, mother and I were invited to lunch. We arrived at the appointed time, introduced ourselves and, over lunch, terms were agreed upon. When I reached England, I was to live in her house in Sutton in Surrey, about 15 miles out of London.

Came sailing day. All Panadura seemed to be at the jetty to say “Good Luck”. Rubber was then, (in 1928), nearly three rupees a pound and each one at the jetty gave me a gold sovereign. I got over seventy in all at a time when England had gone off gold and an Englishman had not seen a sovereign since the Great War of 1914.

Friends and relatives departed after kisses, tears and farewells, but two good friends came on board later, my teacher Victor C. Perera and my classmate, Eustace Pieris. I had the Captain’s permission to keep them as my guests to dinner on board. No extra charge was made and I therefore gave the dinner steward a sovereign as tip. He looked at me amazed, did not seem to know what he had received, put it in his palm and pressed it against the table top. He had never seen a sovereign.

On another occasion in London I purchased some gramophone records and paid a sovereign. I returned home with the records and change to find that change had been given me for ten shillings only. I went back to the shop the next day and mentioned the matter to the shopkeeper. He apologized, gave me an extra ten shillings and said he could not make out a sovereign from a half-sovereign.

The voyage itself was uneventful, except for the fact that Sir Wilfred and Lady de Soysa with all their children including the eldest, Harold (later Lord Bishop of Colombo) were on board and looked after me. I have not met two more gracious and kindly persons than Sir Wilfred and his good lady. One hour with the children and you could not but succumb to their charm. We disembarked at Marseilles, the de Soysas going on holiday to Nice in the South of France and I taking the night train to London via Calais and Dover.

On the platform at Marseilles, a Ceylonese who said he had been resident there for several years and ran a restaurant, approached us and introduced himself. When he found that Sir Wilfred and party were going to Nice and that I would be alone waiting a few hours for the boat-train to Calais, he asked me to come along with him to see the city. Sir Wilfred, who knew I had the sovereigns on me, got behind the man and signaled to me not to go. I ‘did’ the city with an officer of the American Express who brought me back to the station in good time and put me in my wagon-lit when the train arrived.

Sutton in Surrey

The night in the sleeping-car from Marseilles to Calais and the journey from Dover to London were comfortable. So was the Channel crossing. I kept gazing out of the window at the green fields, the cattle pasturing, the huge advertising boards and the neat little houses flying past as the train sped on. When the countryside gave way to back-to-back houses and overcrowding, and the number of lines began to increase at an alarming rate and the train reduced speed, I knew we were approaching the terminal station of Victoria, but it was a long time before the train finally pulled up at the station.

I was met by my uncle, D.S. Jayawickrama and Mr Amos of Richardson & Co. Mr Richardson was to be my Guardian and banker for the duration of my stay.

I spent my first night in a guest house and next day went shopping. The vastness of London frightened me. The buses, the noise, the several lines of traffic, the tall, big-built policemen in the smart helmets, the neon signs, Piccadilly Circus – this was all so different from our small Colombo and its Fort Station, our ramshackle buses and our puny policemen. I arrived in London in February 1928 when it was bitterly cold, but the cold did not affect me. After a few days in London, I moved to Sutton Lodge, the place which Mr Dyson had found for me.

I found myself in a large country house with about 10 bedrooms, standing on seven acres of land, with its own tennis court, croquet lawn and kitchen garden. The house was situated on the narrow London – Brighton Road and the entrances to the house were so narrow that a large car could not be turned in but had to be parked on the road.

The lady in charge, Miss Overton, aged about 60, was educated at Oxford at a time when Oxford did not confer degrees on women; but I believe that on the Oxford Examination, Dublin University conferred a degree. She was a heavy smoker, a charming lady. Years later, she revisited Ceylon and spent some days at Panadura as a guest of my parents.

On the day of my arrival, a Danish girl, aged 19 arrived, and, from then onwards, it was a case of one or two new arrivals each day, all females of about the same age but from different countries, until the house was full. Except for the butler, I was the only male in the house. These girls, all from well-to-do families and with about the same allowance as I received, came about February each year and returned to their homes by Christmas.

English was compulsory in all their schools. They spoke English, but not as the Englishmen spoke it. In most of their languages, as in Sinhala, Latin and German, the verb comes at the end of the sentence. For example, the German girl will ask me “Will you with me for a walk come?” All the girls came to learn idiom and, when Miss Overton was not free, I used to take the lesson which meant reading a bit of Shaw or Galsworthy and explaining it to them.

In this way, during the three years I stayed at Sutton Lodge, I was privileged to enjoy the friendship of these girls of many nationalities, some of whom still write to me at Christmas. Amongst them, as far as I can now remember, were Margaret and Trudy Brunner, sisters (Switzerland), Greth Ahner (Sweden), Sombor Marta (Hungary), Szmidel Zsuzsi and Verona Mermelstein (Czechoslovakia), Zofia Gabryszewska (Poland), List Pospichil (Austria), a beautiful girl from Vienna for whose picture a toothpaste company offered her about £ 250 for permission to use it for purposes of advertisement, Ilse Wolff (Germany), Nina Rissoni (Italy) and Idelette Allier (France), whose father was a great friend of Mahatma Gandhi, and Ramain Rolland.

It was a delightful experience. We were all part of the establishment. Miss Overton gave us a completely free hand about the house. If we felt hungry, we raided the larder and sliced a portion of ham or cheese. The Swiss girls, who consumed enormous quantities of potatoes, were always hungry. After dinner, I was made to go out into the garden and shake the apple and pear trees and bring the girls some fruit to eat. Sometimes I would take about four of the girls about a mile down the road for bacon and eggs – the equivalent of our egg hoppers. But they never let me pay the entire bill. I had to keep a careful account of the expenditure and this was equally divided on our return home and I was reimbursed.

It was so at table also. As the only male I was expected to have my cigarettes and pass my case round the table, and with thirteen girls, a packet of twenty did not last very long. But I was never out of pocket because every one of the girls kept me supplied with ample stocks to supply them at table!

There was one thing that irritated me: Miss Overton insisted that I should dress for dinner. The girls all changed into long black dresses and I could not protest as the lone male. The butler was superb.As I said before, the Swiss girls were great potato eaters. It was the custom of the house to put new arrivals on either side of Miss Overton who presided at the head of the table with me at the other end. It was also the practice, with 13 girls, Miss Overton and myself, fifteen in all, to make for a fish course, thirty pieces of fish and thirty potatoes with other vegetables. On the first day of the Swiss girls’ arrival, they were served with fish, and then with the potatoes, and one of the girls asked “Is this all for me?” “Good Lord, no,” said Miss Overton, “Take only two.” It was after that that we started our tramp for bacon and eggs.

In my third year at Sutton Lodge, I had male company. There was a French boy Pierre Dujardin, a Spaniard and two Dutch boys. There was also a Siamese Prince who said that his father, a Sultan, had many wives and 52 children.

The Swedish girl, Greta, asked me within a week of my arrival at Sutton to come with her and take her round London. It was a case of the blind leading the blind. Armed with road maps and bus routes we set out and, after seeing the sights like the Tower of London, the Mansion House, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and Queen Victoria’s statue from the top of an open bus, we arrived again at Piccadilly Circus for lunch.

I was a stranger in the place and walked into the biggest and cheapest eating place there – Lyons Corner House, which had three floors, each seating about a thousand persons with an orchestra on each floor, and open day and night. It was difficult to find a table, but after much walking we found one at which a gentleman was finishing his peach melba. With his permission, we sat down opposite him, I facing him and Greta next to me.

When he had finished his meal and paid the bill, he rose and, in rising, tilted the small table with the result that plates, glasses and cutlery went crashing on the floor. The balance of the peach melba went on Greta’s expensive blue frock. Being in unfamiliar surroundings, I became very nervous as a thousand faces turned round to stare at Greta and myself. I called the waitress and asked that Greta be taken to the ladies’ room to tidy herself.

In the meantime the officer in charge of the floor dressed in a morning suit, walked up to the table and inquired of the gentleman “I presume it was an accident, Sir”. “Not at all, not at all,” he repeated. “Then will you please come with me,” said the official, and took him to the Manager. I was there seated alone, eyes still staring at me, with the fellow in the Manager’s room and Greta in the ladies’ room. It was a most unpleasant experience within seven days of my arrival in England.

Greta returned, her dress clean but spoilt by ice-cream stains. The floor manager returned with the brute and addressing me said, “Sir, this gentleman says he did this deliberately. In the circumstances, it is for the lady to take legal action if she considers it to be necessary.” I explained the position to Greta. I was only a witness, and as no damage had been done to my clothes, Greta said in her Swedish English ” I have been in your country only a few days. I don’t want to go before the ‘Judge’. I can buy another frock but this man manners I can’t teach. Ask him go.” And there it ended. It was the story of a man who was jealous that a “nigger” could take out a girl of family and status whom he was not able to take out and entertain.

Before these girls returned to their homes each Christmas, they all left their addresses with me and invited me to come and spend my long vacation with their parents. They were all people of means; but I had not the money to travel all the way across Europe from Norway down to Italy. I therefore selected three places – France, Germany and Switzerland.

Apart from the girls I have spoken of, there was for a short time at Sutton an elderly Indian lady, the wife of a Judge of the High Court of Madras. On the day of her arrival, as I was about to go on one of my evening walks to the pub, she asked me to be kind enough to bring her a pint of brandy. When the dinner gong sounded, she was absent and I was asked to go and see what the trouble was. There was no reply to my knock or her door. I opened it and saw the brandy pint empty on the carpet by the bedside and her head hanging half out of the bed. I reported that the lady wanted to be excused as she was not feeling quite well. The next day she repeated her request to me and asked me to dispose of the empty. I had to refuse.

In France, I stayed in a delightfully lovely place called Hardelot Plage. ‘Plage’ in French denotes the sea beach. It was about 12 miles from Boulogne and thousands of acres of land there had been bought by my friend Pierre’s father. Apart from his father’s house there were only about 10 other houses, a guest house, a golf course with a hotel called ‘The Golfer’s Hotel’ and of course, the promenade about a mile and a half long.

With my Kandyan walking stick and a turban of seven yards of georgette with a tail about eighteen inches long, I used to take the prom every evening in the company of Pierre’s sister and a few other girls. An Indian friend of mine had taught me how to tie a turban and I never wore a hat after that. When I finally left England, each of my seven turbans in different colours was cut in half, ironed and given to the girls to make frocks!

Pierre’s family were simple, homely and dignified. His sister insisted that I teach her how to tie the turban, which I did. Her father, an extremely wealthy man insisted that I spend my last two days in France – I was there for about three weeks – at his town house in Lille, to which place I was driven in a luxurious car.

At table, the French people had a custom entirely different from the English. I found a spotless table cloth, two glass blocks on either side of the plate and one fork and knife. The English array of silver was not there. The food was excellent and dinner consisted of several courses. After each course, the plate would be replaced, each person placing his fork and knife on the glass blocks in order that the table cloth might not be soiled.

On my second day in Lille and my last day in France, Pierre’s father, at dinner, paid me, as a student, the biggest compliment that has ever been paid to me. He asked the butler to go down to the cellar and bring the two oldest bottles of Champagne. These, covered with dust and cobwebs, were left standing for some time on the table before they were opened. A toast was drunk to my health. Next morning, with much regret, I bade farewell to the family and was driven to the station to entrain for Heidelberg in Germany.

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Features

Development must mean human development

Published

12 hours ago

2026/01/26

Sahan Weerasooriya

Image courtesy Ruminations

Neo-liberal economists assess economic development using parameters like GDP growth, inflation rate, interest rates, debt/GDP ratio and such and recommend measures to improve these expecting a resultant improvement in poverty rates, employment and household income, but this seldom happens as revealed by increasing inequality, decline in real incomes, malnutrition and school dropouts. Increased GDP doesn’t always translate into improved living standards or reduced poverty if benefits aren’t shared.

Quality of life has to be measured in terms of health, education, morals, satisfying employment and cultural activity. Further the society and environment of humans must be conducive for achieving a satisfactory quality of life. Present development models designed to fit the global neoliberalism focus on the development of the economy often at the expense of poor lives, labour, environment, morals and culture.

Human Development

Development must mean human development because true progress focuses on expanding people’s freedoms, capabilities (health, education, skills), and choices, rather than just economic growth (GDP). It’s a people-centered process that ensures individuals can lead fulfilling, productive lives, requiring inclusive policies, social equity, environmental stewardship, and empowerment for meaningful participation in society, moving beyond mere income increases to holistic well-being and human potential. True development addresses social, cultural, political, and environmental aspects alongside economic progress for sustainable well-being. Development, at its core, is about the expansion of human potential and rights, ensuring everyone has a chance to achieve their full potential.

It’s a transformative process that prioritizes people, their freedoms, and their ability to shape their own lives, making it a fundamental human right and the true measure of societal progress. Investing in education, healthcare, and culture has a powerful multiplier effect on families and societies

If Sri Lanka is taken as an example, over the 70 years since independence economic, social, health and education disparity between the rich and the poor has increased. Poverty rate at present is 24%, malnutrition is hovering around 15%, school dropout rates are alarmingly high, environment and climate vulnerability as experienced recently is frightening, regarding morals less spoken the better, and debt pressure is uncontrollable despite IMF.

Global Scene

Global scene is no better with inequality rising even in countries like the US, Europe, except in China and Vietnam. Poverty rate in the US is 11% and in Europe 12%. In contrast, China and Vietnam, which are not wholly linked to the neo-liberal economic system, have poverty rates below 1% and 4%, respectively. India still has a substantial number below an income level of USD 3.65 per day amounting to about 40% though extreme poverty (income below USD 2.5 a day) has reduced to about 2%. The upper 10% in the countries with more than 10% poverty own more than 60% of the wealth. One may argue that poverty cannot be totally eliminated, however it needs only 0.3% of the global GDP to eradicate poverty of people living below an income level of USD 2.5 per day. The rich don’t seem to care about this sad situation.

Wealth inequality in Sri Lanka is severe, with recent UNDP reports (2023) placing it among the top five most unequal countries in Asia-Pacific, where the richest 1% own about 31% of wealth, while the poorest 50% own less than 4%; this concentration of assets, coupled with the recent economic crisis, exacerbates deep gaps between rich and poor. Income gaps are stark, with Colombo district seeing the richest group hold over 72% of household income, compared to lower-income areas. Despite easing inflation and reasonable GDP growth, food prices more than doubled between 2021 and 2024, contributing to elevated malnutrition and food insecurity and real wages remain below their 2019 levels.

These facts and figures clearly show that neo-liberal policies have failed in human development in Sri Lanka as well as all countries in the grip of neoliberalism. A quarter of the population is in decline in health, education, real income, employment, morals, culture and all other good aspects of living. On the other hand, in countries which are not bound by the neo-liberal global system poor people are not on the decline but are well incorporated in the inclusive system of governance. Martin Jacques a British journalist and author of When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, has lauded the Chinese model for its economic success and argued that it represents a distinct, effective approach to governance.

Broad-based investment

Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies, has praised China’s governance model for its “broad-based” investment in people, including healthcare, education, and infrastructure. China’s governance model prioritizes stability and long-term policy continuity, positioning it as an adaptable and effective system in certain non-Western contexts. The model’s emphasis on performance-based governance, continuous public engagement through consultative mechanisms, and controlled media strategies presents a unique approach that aligns well with the developmental needs of some emerging economies (M Y Abesha, B F Kebede, 2024). Similarly praise for the Vietnamese system of government, often centers on its political stability, the success of its Đổi Mới (Renovation) economic reforms, and its ability to maintain rapid, sustained growth.

In the grip of neo-liberalism

It is not that the countries caught in the grip of neo-liberalism have not made special attempts to improve the lot of the poor and it is also true that there had been significant improvements but the gains are not stable, and are very much vulnerable to external vagaries such as Trump and his tariffs, climate disasters, etc. as recently observed in Sri Lanka where poverty jumped from 14% to 24%. This is the fault of the system we are caught in and not so much in the intentions or competence of governments. Having said that, the onus however, is on the rulers to try and develop alternate systems that address poverty and human development.

The greed dependent, consumerism driven, profit motivated neo-liberal systems focus on capital accumulation and expect benefits to trickle down to the poor, but as seen so often the amounts that trickle down are woefully inadequate to solve poverty. This is why the national poverty statistics show that the richest country in the world, the US has 11% poor people while China has almost none. This is despite continuous effort by the US government to solve and overcome the problem.

This predicament is common to all poor countries in the global south, they are all in the neo-liberal trap. Individual countries cannot escape even if they want to. If they attempt it what could happen could be seen when one looks around. Vietnam had to pay a heavy price to defeat two imperial powers and fortunately they had Ho Chi Minh which made all the difference. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Venezuela lost but their people may still harbour anti-imperial fervour and one day may rise up.

Need for new World Order

Instead of waiting for that day what has to be done, as I have repeatedly said in my earlier letters in these columns, is for the global south to join forces and develop a new world order based on an economic system that would emphasize on human development rather than GDP, which would have the capacity to face up to the might of imperialism. Together they would be a force that could fearlessly face up to the hegemony of the global north. The new world order must jettison the export led economic model and instead make self- sufficiency in each country the common goal. Instead of competition between these countries to produce for export to the global north, there should be cooperation to help each other to achieve self-sufficiency and human development. If countries of the global south become self-sufficient in essential needs neo-liberalism will be eradicated and human development would take precedence.

by N. A. de S. Amaratunga

Features

The Separation of Powers and the Independence of the Judiciary

Published

12 hours ago

2026/01/26

Sahan Weerasooriya

Checks and Balances in the Present Constitution

Moreover, the recent ruling given by the Speaker in Parliament on January 9, 2026, on the Opposition Motion to appoint a Select Committee to review recent appointments made by the JSC to the Judiciary further buttresses the explicit recognition of the SOP and the independence of the Judiciary. The Speaker reiterated the commitment of Parliament to the doctrine of the SOP and refused the Motion on the basis inter alia that Parliament was not hierarchically superior to the Judiciary and cannot be permitted to control the judiciary by creating an oversight mechanism with regard to the JSC.

Professor G.L. Peiris (Prof. GLP) in a speech delivered on December 12, 2025 at the International Research Conference at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo published in The Island of December 15, 2025 under the caption “Presidential authority in times of emergency – A contemporary appraisal” has critiqued the majority judgment of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in Ambika Sathkunanathan V. A.G. on the declaration of emergency by Ranil Wickremesinghe as Acting President on July17, 2022 in response to the Aragalaya. The majority held that Wickremasinghe had violated the Fundamental Rights of the people by a Declaration of a State of Emergency. The author was to attend this event but was unable to do so due to a professional commitment out of Colombo.

After citing authority from several foreign jurisdictions in support of his view of judicial deference to the Executive on matters relating to an Emergency, he advances as one of the grounds as to why the majority were wrong in the Sri Lankan context is that the predisposition to judicial deference is reinforced by a firmly entrenched constitutional norm – “a foundational principle of our public law is the vesting of judicial power not in the courts but in parliament, which exercises judicial power through the instrument of the courts. This is made explicit by Article 4(c) of the constitution which provides “the judicial power of the People shall be exercised by Parliament through courts, tribunals and institutions created and established, or recognised by the Constitution, or created and established by law, except in regard to matters relating to the privileges, immunities and powers of Parliament and of its members, wherein the judicial power of the People may be exercised directly by Parliament according to law” . Prof GLP opines that the majority judgment constitutes “judicial overreach which has many undesirable consequences” including “traducing constitutional traditions; subverting the specific model of separation of powers reflected in our Constitution”.

Prof. GLP, is in effect advancing the view that the Sri Lankan Courts in the present constitutional framework of the Second Republican Constitution 1978 are subservient to the Executive or Parliament.

This view of Prof. GLP is with respect, wrong on both constitutional principle and policy. There are no constitutional restraints on the judicial review of executive action in relation to declarations of emergency. Self-imposed judicial restraint may well constitute an abdication of judicial responsibility.

Unlike the Independence Constitution where a Separation of Powers (SOP) was found by judicial interpretation with the concomitant judicial power to even strike down post enacted legislation, the 1^st Republican Constitution of 1972 explicitly did away with the concept of an SOP and instead whilst vesting sovereignty in the people, nevertheless made the National State Assembly the supreme instrument of state power exercising the Executive, Legislative and Judicial power of the people (vide Article 5). Resultantly the judicial review of enacted legislation was expressly done away with and instead pre-enactment review of a Bill tabled in Parliament by a Constitutional Court was provided for.

Indisputably, this fundamental departure introduced by the First Republican Constitution was a direct response to the Queen V. Liyanage and the other judicial power cases where the Courts expressly recognised an SOP and the jurisdiction to even review the constitutionality of post enacted legislation.

But this doctrine of the abolishing of the SOP was subsequently abandoned, and one of the significant and welcome departures introduced by the Second Republican Constitution of 1978 was the explicit reintroduction into our constitutional framework of the principle of an SOP. This is made explicit by Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution which vests Sovereignty in the people but proceeds to delineate how that sovereignty is exercised in terms of the trichotomy of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers and the further recognition of franchise and Fundamental Rights as also integral components of the sovereignty of the people.

Although the twin principles introduced in 1972 of a constitutional bar on the post-enactment review of legislation was retained together with the pre-enactment review of legislation in the present 1978 Constitution, nevertheless the reintroduction of the SOP which guarantees the independence of the Judiciary is a fundamental feature of the present Constitution.

Although Article 4(c) of the present Constitution does state that “the judicial power of the People shall be exercised by Parliament through courts … recognised by the Constitution … except in regard to matters relating to the privileges, immunities and powers of Parliament and of its Members, wherein the judicial power of the People may be exercised directly by Parliament according to law”, nevertheless there is a cursus curiae (practice of the court) of judicial authority by the Sri Lankan superior Courts that have recognised both the concepts of the SOP and the independence of the Judiciary from Executive or Legislative encroachment.

Leading cases which have recognized an SOP include Premachandra V. Monty Jayawickrema (1994) 2 SLR 90 (SC) and the Supreme Court Determination on the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution (2002) in which the author appeared as Junior Counsel to the late Deshamanya H.L. de Silva P.C. The Supreme Court has recognised that the independence of the Judiciary is an intrinsic component of the present Constitution in several cases including the Court’s Determination on the Industrial Disputes Act (Special Provisions) Bill 2022. In fact, a more explicit pronouncement was made in Hewamanne V. De Silva where the Supreme Court held that judicial power vested solely and exclusively in the Judiciary (1983) 1 SLR 1 at 20.

Moreover, the explicit vesting in the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka under Articles 125 and 126 of the exclusive jurisdiction to interpret the Constitution and in respect of Fundamental Rights underscores the preeminent role of the Judiciary in our constitutional framework. Foundational principle of the present Constitution as recognized by our Courts include the Rule of Law, power is a trust, and there are no unfettered discretion in public law. Regrettably, Prof. GLP assails these welcome advances made in our public law jurisprudence.

In our constitutional setting of checks and balances and judicial oversight it is the function of the Judiciary to review the legality of Executive action, including matters relating to the declaration of a State of Emergency and Emergency Regulations. The duty of interpreting an Act of Parliament is a function of Courts and not of Parliament (Court of Appeal in C.W.C. V. Superintendent, Beragala Estates 76 NLR 1). The author cited this decision to the Supreme Court in challenging the Inland Revenue Bill introduced by the late Mangala Samaraweera. That Court reiterated this principle and agreeing with the author, ordered a referendum on a particular Clause.

Even in the pre-independence period up to 1948, when vide powers were conferred on the Governor who exercised Executive authority, the Courts have unequivocally reviewed the legality of executive action as manifest by the significant decision of the Supreme Court in 1937 in “In Re. Mark Anthony Lester Bracegirdle“, where the executive act of the Governor of arrest and deportation of Bracegirdle to Australia was reviewed by the Supreme Court and quashed. This decision was a striking assertion of judicial independence and is the first significant judicial review of executive action.

(The author is a President’s Counsel and a Professor of Law)

By Nigel Hatch1

Features

Trump’s Interregnum

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/25

Thilina Walpola

Since taking office again Donald Trump has signed a blizzard of executive orders

Trump is full of surprises; he is both leader and entertainer. Nearly nine hours into a long flight, a journey that had to U-turn over technical issues and embark on a new flight, Trump came straight to the Davos stage and spoke for nearly two hours without a sip of water. What he spoke about in Davos is another issue, but the way he stands and talks is unique in this 79-year-old man who is defining the world for the worse. Now Trump comes up with the Board of Peace, a ticket to membership that demands a one-billion-dollar entrance fee for permanent participation. It works, for how long nobody knows, but as long as Trump is there it might. Look at how many Muslim-majority and wealthy countries accepted: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates are ready to be on board. Around 25–30 countries reportedly have already expressed the willingness to join.

The most interesting question, and one rarely asked by those who speak about Donald J. Trump, is how much he has earned during the first year of his second term. Liberal Democrats, authoritarian socialists, non-aligned misled-path walkers hail and hate him, but few look at the financial outcome of his politics. His wealth has increased by about three billion dollars, largely due to the crypto economy, which is why he pardoned the founder of Binance, the China-born Changpeng Zhao. “To be rich like hell,” is what Trump wanted. To fault line liberal democracy, Trump is the perfect example. What Trump is doing — dismantling the old façade of liberal democracy at the very moment it can no longer survive — is, in a way, a greater contribution to the West. But I still respect the West, because the West still has a handful of genuine scholars who do not dare to look in the mirror and accept the havoc their leaders created in the name of humanity.

Democracy in the Arab world was dismantled by the West. You may be surprised, but that is the fact. Elizabeth Thompson of American University, in her book How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs, meticulously details how democracy was stolen from the Arabs. “No ruler, no matter how exalted, stood above the will of the nation,” she quotes Arab constitutional writing, adding that “the people are the source of all authority.” These are not the words of European revolutionaries, nor of post-war liberal philosophers; they were spoken, written and enacted in Syria in 1919–1920 by Arab parliamentarians, Islamic reformers and constitutionalists who believed democracy to be a universal right, not a Western possession. Members of the Syrian Arab Congress in Damascus, the elected assembly that drafted a democratic constitution declaring popular sovereignty — were dissolved by French colonial forces. That was the past; now, with the Board of Peace, the old remnants return in a new form.

Trump got one thing very clear among many others: Western liberal ideology is nothing but sophisticated doublespeak dressed in various forms. They go to West Asia, which they named the Middle East, and bomb Arabs; then they go to Myanmar and other places to protect Muslims from Buddhists. They go to Africa to “contribute” to livelihoods, while generations of people were ripped from their homeland, taken as slaves and sold.

How can Gramsci, whose 135^th birth anniversary fell this week on 22 January, help us escape the present social-political quagmire? Gramsci was writing in prison under Mussolini’s fascist regime. He produced a body of work that is neither a manifesto nor a programme, but a theory of power that understands domination not only as coercion but as culture, civil society and the way people perceive their world. In the Prison Notebooks he wrote, “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old world is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid phenomena appear.” This is not a metaphor. Gramsci was identifying the structural limbo that occurs when foundational certainties collapse but no viable alternative has yet emerged.

The relevance of this insight today cannot be overstated. We are living through overlapping crises: environmental collapse, fragmentation of political consensus, erosion of trust in institutions, the acceleration of automation and algorithmic governance that replaces judgment with calculation, and the rise of leaders who treat geopolitics as purely transactional. Slavoj Žižek, in his column last year, reminded us that the crisis is not temporary. The assumption that history’s forward momentum will automatically yield a better future is a dangerous delusion. Instead, the present is a battlefield where what we thought would be the new may itself contain the seeds of degeneration. Trump’s Board of Peace, with its one-billion-dollar gatekeeping model, embodies this condition: it claims to address global violence yet operates on transactional logic, prioritizing wealth over justice and promising reconstruction without clear mechanisms of accountability or inclusion beyond those with money.

Gramsci’s critique helps us see this for what it is: not a corrective to global disorder, but a reenactment of elite domination under a new mechanism. Gramsci did not believe domination could be maintained by force alone; he argued that in advanced societies power rests on gaining “the consent and the active participation of the great masses,” and that domination is sustained by “the intellectual and moral leadership” that turns the ruling class’s values into common sense. It is not coercion alone that sustains capitalism, but ideological consensus embedded in everyday institutions — family, education, media — that make the existing order appear normal and inevitable. Trump’s Board of Peace plays directly into this mode: styled as a peace-building institution, it gains legitimacy through performance and symbolic endorsement by diverse member states, while the deeper structures of inequality and global power imbalance remain untouched.

Worse, the Board’s structure, with contributions determining permanence, mimics the logic of a marketplace for geopolitical influence. It turns peace into a commodity, something to be purchased rather than fought for through sustained collective action addressing the root causes of conflict. But this is exactly what today’s democracies are doing behind the scenes while preaching rules-based order on the stage. In Gramsci’s terms, this is transformismo — the absorption of dissent into frameworks that neutralize radical content and preserve the status quo under new branding.

If we are to extract a path out of this impasse, we must recognize that the current quagmire is more than political theatre or the result of a flawed leader. It arises from a deeper collapse of hegemonic frameworks that once allowed societies to function with coherence. The old liberal order, with its faith in institutions and incremental reform, has lost its capacity to command loyalty. The new order struggling to be born has not yet articulated a compelling vision that unifies disparate struggles — ecological, economic, racial, cultural — into a coherent project of emancipation rather than fragmentation.

To confront Trump’s phenomenon as a portal — as Žižek suggests, a threshold through which history may either proceed to annihilation or re-emerge in a radically different form — is to grasp Gramsci’s insistence that politics is a struggle for meaning and direction, not merely for offices or policies. A Gramscian approach would not waste energy on denunciation alone; it would engage in building counter-hegemony — alternative institutions, discourses, and practices that lay the groundwork for new popular consent. It would link ecological justice to economic democracy, it would affirm the agency of ordinary people rather than treating them as passive subjects, and it would reject the commodification of peace.

Gramsci’s maxim “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” captures this attitude precisely: clear-eyed recognition of how deep and persistent the crisis is, coupled with an unflinching commitment to action. In an age where AI and algorithmic governance threaten to redefine humanity’s relation to decision-making, where legitimacy is increasingly measured by currency flows rather than human welfare, Gramsci offers not a simple answer but a framework to understand why the old certainties have crumbled and how the new might still be forged through collective effort. The problem is not the lack of theory or insight; it is the absence of a political subject capable of turning analysis into a sustained force for transformation. Without a new form of organized will, the interregnum will continue, and the world will remain trapped between the decay of the old and the absence of the new.

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa ✍️