Court Case Against Urgent Bill by Ranil

 

The court case against Urgent Bill to be brought to the parliament by the pro-federalist Ranil was taken up on 6th Feb 2015. The  lawyer who appeared for the petitioners, Jathika Sinhala Peramuna, SJP, Dharshana Weeresekara fiercely argued the case and the judges said that they understand the concerns and praised their attempts to get an interim injunction against the second respondent, from endorsing any Urgent Bill submitted to him for any Constitutional Amendments. However, the judges said that they have no legal powers to interfere with the affairs of Parliament, hence unable to issue an interim injunction against the 2nd respondent.

SJP reported that this outcome was not something  did not expect because it was known fact  in advance the difficulties that the judges would face. This attempt is in fact a new one and the first known one of its kinds. Therefore, with this case, it was highlighted the issue – that there is a danger of present government trying to do away constitutional amendments like the previous government in which, the 18th Amendment was submitted as an Urgent Bill and passed within 48 hours without allowing the one week time period allowed for any citizen to object to any unhealthy amendments.

Now the government, especially the National Executive Council (NEC) knows that there are people who are objecting to amend the constitution through an Urgent Bill procedure. Therefore, SJP thinks that NEC already got the message and would consider Constitutional Amendment through normal procedure specified in the 12th Chapter of the Constitution thereby ensuring transparency when amending the Constitution for which they received a mandate.

It is reported that the main reason why  SJP wanted any constitutional amendments through the normal procedure were because the pro-elamist and pro-federalist government lead by western backed anti-nationalists politicians could tinker with Police and Land powers in the 13th Amendment along with other Constitutional amendments without giving anybody time and space to object to it.



825 Viewers