• Alleges Exec. is stifling necessary backdrop to elevate CA Prez. to SC

President Ranil Wickremesinghe is attempting to create a conflict between the Constitutional Council (CC) and the Judiciary by blocking the necessary background for the CC to elevate the President of the Court of Appeal (CA), Justice Nissanka Bandula Karunarathna as a Supreme Court (SC) Judge, claimed a member of the CC.

The recommendation made by Wickremesinghe to appoint Justice Karunarathna as a SC Judge is yet to be approved by the Constitutional Council.

In order to go ahead with the matter, the CC had requested Chief Justice (CJ), President's Counsel (PC) Jayantha Jayasuriya for information pertaining to the apex courts’ (CA and SC) Judges' performance, but the CJ had informed the CC that he was not in possession of such. The CC had then prepared a set of rules with regard to the appointment of judges, and sent them to the Government Printing Department to be gazetted, but the said Department had reportedly not gone ahead with the matter under the instructions of Attorney General (AG), Sanjay Rajaratnam PC.

Against this backdrop, The Daily Morning queried a CC member as to what would the CC do with regard to the recommendation made by the President to promote Justice Karunarathna. In response, the CC member said: "I don’t know what will happen. The CC has not yet made a decision on the matter, and the President cannot appoint him without our (CC) approval. Therefore, I am not sure what will happen. What has happened is that the President is trying to frustrate the Judiciary by not giving this (the proposed promotion of Justice Karunarathna whose name has been nominated to the CC by President Wickremesinghe), and is instead creating a conflict between the CC and the Judiciary."

Opposition Parliamentarian Prof. G.L. Peiris, who is also a former Justice Minister, recently alleged that President Wickremesinghe has directly intervened and ordered the Government Printing Department not to print the gazette notification pertaining to the rules prepared by the CC to streamline the judges' appointments. The Department has however denied the allegation, and stated that they were not subjected to any influence from the President.

Commenting on the matter to The Daily Morning on an earlier occasion, a CC member said that they could not approve or reject someone's appointment to a higher court just because someone said something good or bad about them. As several attempts of the CC to streamline the judges' appointments have failed, The Daily Morning queried regarding what action they would take in the end, to which the CC member replied: "In the end, we will have to make decisions based on what is being posted on social media platforms such as Facebook, and statements made by certain individuals."