Supreme Court Becomes Political Decision Maker in Sri Lanka
By Dr. Vickramabahu Karunaratne
The intervention of Supreme Court to arrest teachers’ trade union leaders was a temporary set back for the trade union movement. The government sector trade unions will definitely get together to face the challenge. Even GMOA leaders are quite concerned about the interpretation given by the Supreme Court ruling. It means all state employees are liable to be charged of fundamental rights violation, if they refuse to perform their service. Not only government employees but even state cooperation employees are considered agents of the government.
If any private individual or company is doing contract work for a state institute to provide any service such as cleaning, transport or security, etc. then such individual or company, again comes under the category of state agency that provides a service to the people. This means very large percentage of the proletariat is forced to become agents of the very bourgeois state that oppresses them. This ruling negates the social democratic interpretation of judiciary as a provider of civil protection to the oppressed proletariat. Very large number of those who made fundamental rights applications is state sector workers. Now the chicken has come home to roost.
All workers in the state sector, together with workers in all institutes with some connection with the state, could become respondents in fundamental rights appeals. Thus government servants in the broadest sense have been pushed back to the times of British Raj, without the right to any form of trade union action. In 1912 when railway workers struck work the British Raj took the same position that government workers have no right to strike. It is through generations of sacrifice and determination that state sector workers won the right to strike against injustice and indifference. We may be told that these negations are according to the cycle of impermanence given in Buddhism.
Politically speaking what we witness is the consolidation of Supreme Court as the political decision maker, at a time where executive presidency has become a virtual prisoner of JVP politics, and the parliament is moving towards a dead lock. It is a new kind of Bonapartism arising from judicial power. In several countries in the subcontinent we see a strong role played by the Supreme Court. Here too we see that political leaders are accused of both corruption and inability to make sensible political decisions.
However the Supreme Court decision in relation examination boycott may create bigger problems. Correction of exam papers is not a routine job that can be easily evaluated by the commissioner of examinations. Academic judgments are as serious as judicial judgments. Both cannot be made under pressure and duress. Under pressure and unpleasant back ground judges may make partial decisions. In the case of examination work it may be worse. Best students may get bad marks while the failures get distinctions.
In any case, nobody can be sure of examination results given by a group of angry and disheartened examiners. So, it is going to be a protracted struggle in which both sides will be using open and hidden moves. Already strange things have happened. While the Supreme Court has ordered a bail of 50 000Rs for each trade union leader, money came instantly not from the oppressed trade unions or their supporters, but from a third party! So, while these leaders were threatened with imprisonment, all precautions were taken by the regime to see that no one is really imprisoned.
It is true that Mahinda regime was unwilling to give in to the teachers, as it could have a multiple effect creating waves of agitations, strikes, in the state sector. On the other hand if the exam work drags on, chaos can creep into the entire education system. However, more than the leaders of the government, the JVP leaders were scared of anarchy and the break down of the chauvinist regime they worked so hard to consolidate.
Out of the five teachers union one was dominated by the JVP elements. This union was not interested in challenging the arguments put forward against them. Obviously, the JVP in the final analysis has to defend the government. Wimal Weerawansa’s pet statement is that they do not want to jump from frying pan to the fire. What else he can say, when he knows that his closest nationalist friend Dr Gunadasa Amarasekara in 1989 thanked the then defence minister Ranjan Wijeratne for eliminating Comrade Wjeweera, whom the good doctor thought a madman?