Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), a prominent Tamil political party in Sri Lanka, on Sunday sought a national referendum on a constitutional amendment that intends to raise the retirement age of judges.
The proposed 22nd Constitution Amendment seeks to increase the retirement age of judges from 65 to 67 years and that of the Court of Appeal judges from 63 to 65.
It also proposes increasing the retirement age of judges of the High Court, District Courts and Magistrates' Courts to 62. Article 107 of the Constitution would be amended to extend the terms of judges.
The amendment has been placed on the order book of Parliament since August 18. It is scheduled for its second reading once the Supreme Court's verdicts on the petitions challenging its constitutionality are known.
Following deliberations at ITAK's political committee, a statement said the proposed amendment concerns the sovereignty of the people and therefore needs to be placed before the public through a referendum.
Notably, the UN rapporteur on judicial independence, Margaret Satterthwaite, has warned that extending the tenure of sitting judges via an ad hoc change creates risks of executive and legislative interference.
Meanwhile, several opposition parties, which had challenged the constitutionality of the amendment, also seek a referendum in addition to a two-thirds majority in Parliament in their petitions.
The National People's Power (NPP) government of Anura Kumara Dissanayake has gone ahead with its parliamentary presentation despite opposition from the lawyers' apex body, Bar Association of Sri Lanka, members of the Judicial Service Association and even the Commonwealth Lawyers Association.
They dubbed it a "direct assault" on the independence of the country's judiciary as the executive president would be empowered with a capacity to manipulate the judiciary's functioning due to the amendment.
The government held that extending judges' terms was a necessity to clear the current backlog of over 1.1 million cases.
With inputs from PTI
