By Jehan Perera –

It appears that the die has been cast on the 22nd Amendment. The government appears unshaken in its determination to ensure its passage into law. From the government’s perspective, the 22nd Amendment and associated legislation, by increasing the tenure of all judges by two years, will give them the extra time to complete their existing cases, among others. This will do away with the need to change judges midstream and have complex legal cases go back to the beginning, which has too often been the case. The completion of these cases will be to the benefit of the victims who have waited for decades for justice in some cases. It will also be to the government’s benefit as many of the wrongdoers are those in the political opposition. In the past, human rights and democracy activists, not to mention lawyers in the field, have bemoaned the manner in which court cases have got delayed for a variety of reasons, including judges being promoted or transferred midstream or reaching the age of retirement.

Principled opposition to 22nd Amendment is articulated in terms of the ad hoc and sudden emergence of the amendment. Those who advance this argument have expressed concern that extending judges’ tenure could create a sense of indebtedness to the government and weaken judicial independence. They would prefer the extension of judges’ tenure to be part of a comprehensive package of constitutional reforms that would apply across the board to other sectors of the public service and, ideally, find its place in the new constitution that the NPP promised in its election manifesto. The question is one of timing. The sooner a good thing is done the better.Public opinion surveys carried out regularly have shown that the vast majority of people consider that corruption and criminality at high levels need to be brought to an end as soon as possible. They want accountability to become real rather than remain an unfulfilled promise. The public mood today is that the era of impunity must finally end.

Investigations by law enforcement agencies into the misdeeds of politicians in the past have too often come to naught due to the lack of political will on the part of successive governments. But on this occasion there is a manifest expression of such political will, as witnessed in the seemingly endless series of corruption and criminality cases being uncovered and exposed week by week and month by month. It is equally predictable that those under investigation will wish to move heaven and earth to challenge the legitimacy of this process. Some will perceive the prosecutions as essentially being in the nature of political revenge rather than lawful accountability and argue along those lines. Others will seek to rally public opinion by questioning the independence of the institutions involved. These reactions should surprise no one. But they make it all the more important that the credibility of the institutions through which accountability is pursued be safeguarded.

Safeguard Change

There is an old saying that society is a mule, not a horse. A horse may respond to repeated use of the spurs, but a mule, if driven too hard, may throw its rider off altogether. The proverb captures an important truth about governing societies. History offers many examples of societies that succeeded in exposing wrongdoing but failed to build reconciliation afterwards. The greatest danger is not merely that the guilty will protest their innocence. That is to be expected. The greater danger is that punishment itself becomes the principal language of politics. When that happens, each change of government carries with it the expectation that today’s judgments will tomorrow be revisited, reversed or avenged.

The electoral verdicts of 2024 that swept the NPP into power brought an entirely new group of political leaders to the fore. This transition needs to take place with care to ensure that polarisation and civil conflict are contained rather than intensified. The post-22nd Amendment period will therefore require something more than legal correctness. It will require political sagacity. Accountability needs to be seen in the light of strengthening the legitimacy of institutions rather than becoming sidetracked into another arena of political contestation. If justice comes to be seen as merely the continuation of politics by legal means, even deserving convictions of wrongdoers may lose public confidence on which long lasting justice depends.

Troubling in this context has been the conduct of some opponents of the amendment. They have not only attacked the government leadership for taking forward the 22nd Amendment. They have also launched personal attacks on judges and cast sweeping aspersions on the judiciary itself. Ironically, in seeking to discredit the courts before they deliver their judgments, they risk undermining the very institution they claim to defend. The lawyers who have united against the 22nd Amendment have every right and duty to raise constitutional concerns. Opposition politicians have every right to criticise legislation. But both also carry a responsibility not to erode public confidence in the judiciary through speculative accusations that prejudge the integrity of judges before they have acted. Such argumentation weakens an institution that belongs to the entire country, not to any government or opposition.

Real Test

Sri Lanka is emerging from decades of violent conflict and deep political polarisation. Too often in our history, one government’s triumph has become the next government’s point of demonisation as in the once widely used phrase of the “17 year curse” by the successor government. Institutions rebuilt today must therefore survive tomorrow’s transfer of power. They must earn the confidence not only of those who celebrate today’s victories, but also of those who will one day sit in opposition. Institutions that command confidence across political divides need to become stronger and not weaker than the governments that created them.

The national challenge is no longer simply whether accountability will be pursued. It is whether accountability will restore faith in the law by ending a culture of impunity that for too long protected the powerful while denying justice to victims. The country has waited too long for that moment. It must not now be compromised by unnecessary political confrontation or irresponsible attacks on the courts. Ultimately, the strongest answer to the critics of the 22nd Amendment will not come from government ministers or parliamentary speeches. It will need to come from the judges themselves.

The extension of the tenure of members of the judiciary will place an even greater obligation upon them to demonstrate, through every judgment they deliver, that they are truly independent, impartial and beholden to no political authority. When they uphold the law without fear or favour, they will expose the predictions of the doomsayers as unfounded. Those in the legal profession, media, civil society and politics should likewise recognise that criticism of judicial decisions must not become an assault on the institution of the judiciary itself. The greatest service that all sides can render Sri Lanka at this moment is to strengthen the people’s faith that justice belongs equally to every citizen and that no one, however powerful, stands above the law.