COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has sacked Supreme Court Chief Justice Mohan Peiris and reinstated the latter’s predecessor, Shirani Bandaranayake, on the grounds that Bandaranayake was removed through a flawed and illegal impeachment process.
Following this step taken late on Tuesday, Bandaranayake returned to her chamber on Wednesday to a rousing welcome by the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL).
However, the re-instated Chief Justice will retire on Thursday. Senior most Supreme Court judge, K Sripavan, will then become the Chief Justice. He is expected to be made permanent.
Explaining Bandaranayake’s extraordinary decision to retire just after a day in office, her attorney, K Neelakandan, said: “She wants to show that she is not after office. She wanted justice to be done to her, and since justice has been done, she is satisfied.”
The BASL has been arguing that Mohan Peiris was appointed Chief Justice when that post was technically “not vacant”. Parliament had not passed a proper resolution asking the President to sack Bandaranayake. What the House passed finally, was an older resolution seeking the appointment of a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to probe charges of misconduct against Bandaranayake.
When the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP, M A Sumanthiran, pointed out that parliament had not passed a resolution asking the President to sack the Chief Justice but had passed something else, the ruling party simply ignored it, being in a frightful hurry to get rid of the Chief Justice.
Since then, the BASL has been saying that the replacement of Bandaranyake by Peiris was not valid as the post had not been legally vacated.