The Main Opposition policy with regards to the Supremacy of Parliament

It is no secret that all UNP policy is determined by Ranil Wickremasinghe wielding sole power over decisions. It is the same with regard to matters pertaining to Parliament as there is no other person who can come close to winning an argument with him on the legal points of Parliamentary privilege and protocol to say nothing of its supremacy even over the Presidency.

So when it comes to the process of impeaching the Chief Justice, he is lead by the fact that Parliament is supreme and he uses the Precedent set by Anura Bandaranayake where he overruled the Supreme Court in dealing with the possible impeachment of the then Chief Justice Sarath N Silva but which did not make it to the final deliberations due to the proroguing of Parliament.

In that respect he believes that the procedure being adopted by the PSC and rights and privileges of that body is inviolable, even though one may have doubts over the fact that it is not sufficiently represented by members of the opposition and technical matters such as the impeachment motion, which none of the signatories were privy to when it was signed are taken into consideration as being legally unacceptable.

In that respect Mr Wickremasinghe is a stickler for rules and protocol as well as precedent. However with regards to the rulings by the Sarath Silva Supreme Court that permitted crossovers whilst he may disagree with, he has had to accept that as law and live with it. If Sarath Silvas ruling was different, our history would also have been very different, and we would probably not be facing this Kangaroo Court in the first place.

It therefore rubs people up the wrong way to think that the UNP stance is also for the ruling of the PSC to stand. The problem is the people are not so upright, as Mr Wickremasinghe would wish. The Govt. members of the PSC will NOT vote their conscience, and instead do as the dictator ordered. In that lies the particular conundrum in Ranil Wickremasinghe’s logic and the dilemma he faces. He clearly has no answer to that, except to hope that the lawyers in the PSC will vote for upholding the Constitution in the way it was meant to be upheld, so that the charges brought by the Government be shown the right direction, namely the dustbin, and throw out the impeachment motion.

That is the only course of action, Ranil hopes will be taken but will it?