Give rapprochement a chanceNovember 4, 2012, 12:00 pm

The Speaker's decision on the impeachment motion against Chief Justice Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake will be announced tomorrow when Parliament meets. It is not difficult to guess what it will be.

The government is all out to perpetuate its power by removing any obstacle, perceived or real, in its path regardless of the consequences of its action. Foes of the Rajapaksa government are equally determined to sacrifice anyone or anything in their efforts to regain power, sail into public funds and make up for lost time. They are ably assisted in this endeavour by some strange bedfellows such as western-backed NGOs at loggerheads with the government and pro-LTTE elements seeking to avenge the killing of Prabhakaran. Aware of their severe limitations that prevent them from dislodging the government under their own steam, they keep using others to achieve their goal. They made a cat's paw of the then Army Commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka to pull political chestnuts out of the fire and unconscionably ditched him after he had failed to come up with the goods and burnt his fingers. Today, the UNP and the JVP would not touch him with a barge pole! Worse, the UNP has begun to punish its lawmakers, provincial councillors and local government members for the crime of being seen with the war winning general at political rallies! Now, they are trying to achieve their goal at the expense of the judiciary. They are daring the government to go ahead with the appointment of a Parliamentary Select Committee to probe allegations against the CJ in a bid to turn it into a political circus, as we argued the other day.

The fate of any judge is sealed, to all intents and purposes, the moment an impeachment motion signed by more than one half of the MPs against him or her is handed over to the Speaker. There is no way a feeble Opposition could thwart such a move. PSC deliberations and parliamentary debates that ensue are only procedural sideshows where all that Opposition politicians could do is to make a lot of noise and score political points. On the other hand, there is every reason to believe that they do not want the impeachment motion against the CJ abandoned. They are opposing it tooth and nail with a view to cashing in on a possible political turmoil in the aftermath of the impeachment of the CJ, which, they apparently think, might mark the beginning of the end of the government as in Pakistan on President Pervez Musharraf's watch. The UNP, if its leaders' utterances are any indication, is not well disposed towards the Supreme Court, which has ruled in favour of its defectors thereby unwittingly landing it in its present predicament. So, paradoxical as it may sound, we believe that both the government and its opponents who are dogged by an obnoxious history of trying to impeach chief justices want the CJ removed albeit for different reasons. What we are witnessing has all the trappings of a Mexican standoff––in the original sense of the term––or, in other words, a confrontation among

three gunmen where the person who fires first runs the risk of being shot by the third one. The Opposition is waiting till the government makes the mistake of impeaching the CJ.

Learned judges must fight for their rights and carry out their duties and functions without fear or favour, but they had better be wary of being egged on by wily, bankrupt politicians to bring the judiciary on a collision course with other branches of government. They ought to refrain from overstepping their limits and going out of their way to pit themselves against the powers that be. It needs to be added in the same breath that politicians have no mandate to run the judiciary or even try their hand at that task. The government must render unto judges what's theirs and learn to stomach judicial decisions that may not be to its liking. Justice is not always palatable! The coexistence of state institutions, especially the three branches of government, is a prerequisite for the wellbeing of democracy. If they clash owing to idiosyncrasies, ulterior motives, political agendas and whims and fancies of individuals holding high office, governance will become impossible and political instability set in. The country will be the loser.

We believe that there is still time and space for rapprochement and reconciliation. The time has come for the warring parties to soften their stands and reach an amicable settlement for the sake of the people burdened by other problems which cannot be solved with the vital organs of the State resisting each other.

The genie must not be let out of the bottle!