The Culture Of Impunity

By Rajan Hoole –July 30, 2016

Dr. Rajan Hoole

Antecedents Of July 1983 & The Foundations Of Impunity – Part XIII

The Privy Council judgement in Kodeswaran’s case no doubt offended that influential section of the Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) intelligentsia who firmly believed that their independence and national sovereignty consisted in their freedom to enact laws that are bad, inconsistent and repressive. This was reflected in the early acts of the United Front (SLFP, LSSP and CP) government elected in 1970. Appeals to the Privy Council were stopped by the Minister for Justice, Mr. Felix Dias Bandaranaike (FDB). It was under his instructions that the treasury circular of December 1961 to stop the increments of those who did not pass Sinhalese had been drafted.

A new Republican Constitution was enacted on 22nd May 1972 that had removed Section 29 and where Parliament was supreme, so that the courts could no longer reverse bad laws. One could see in these developments an obdurate, rather than a rational, response to the judgement inKodeswaran’s case.

The Republic of Sri Lanka at its very foundation in 1972 was marred by obscurantism, irrationality and intolerance. Instead of solving the manageable problems of the Tamil-speaking minority which existed under the Dominion (Soulbury) Constitution, the 1972 Republican Constitution exacerbated them by removing all tangible checks on the majority group in parliament.

The transition from the already questionable quality of reasoning in Chief Justice H.N.G. Fernando’s judgement in Kodeswaran’s case to retired Chief Justice M.C. Sansoni’s reasoning in his Commission Report is a comment on institutional decay in the nation from 1967 to 1980. If the objectivity of Fernando was limited by the Sinhala Only Act, that of Sansoni was limited by the causes of violence advanced in Prime Minister Jayewardene’s deplorable speech in Parliament on 18th August 1977.

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