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9 Jan, 2013
The following video features
the last couple of a minutes of a longer speech delivered by Dr. Nihal
Jayawickrama at the launch of
The Sri Lankan Republic at 40: Reflections on Constitutional
History, Theory and Practice, a collection of scholarly essays edited
by Asanga Welikala, a Senior Researcher at the
Centre for Policy
Alternatives (the institutional home of
Groundviews)
on 21st December 2012.
In
this excerpt, Dr. Jayawickrama offers a devastating critique of the Rajapaksa
administration and its mode of governance. He notes that Sri Lanka today has
moved beyond an Executive Presidency based model to a corporate governance mode
for the entire country – the Rajapaksa ‘sangamaya‘
(or company) – as noted by the President’s brother, Basil Rajapaksa. After
flagging in brief some of the serious challenges that arise from this mindset
and mode of governance, Dr. Jayawickrama ends with a pertinent question: “What
if the [Rajapaksa] ‘samagama‘
goes bust?
The
speech in full can be viewed
here.
Nihal
Jayawickrama, LLB (Ceylon), PhD (London), was the Permanent Secretary to the
Ministry of Justice from 1970-1977, having been admitted to the Bar as an
Advocate of the Supreme Court in 1962. Moving into academic life, he was
Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, where he taught
public law, and the Ariel F. Sallows Professor of Human Rights at the University
of Saskatchewan, Canada. He is the author of The
Judicial Application of Human Rights Law: National, Regional and International
Jurisprudence (Cambridge University Press, 2002). As Chairman of the Hong
Kong Section of the International Commission of Jurists, he was a principal
commentator on constitutional issues in that territory in the period between the
signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Transfer of Sovereignty.
He was Executive Director of Transparency International in Berlin (1997-2000).
More recently, he was the Chair of the Trustees of the Commonwealth Human Rights
Initiative, London. Since 2000, he has been a UN consultant on judicial reform,
human rights and anti-corruption strategies, and has worked with governments and
judiciaries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern and Central Europe. He
is currently the Coordinator of the UN Judicial Integrity Group.
