I covered the Police and the Attorney
Generals Department, in the two previous blog posts, but it must be said that
this also should have included the office of the Bribery Commissioner, who also
needs the resources to their job, as they are presented with complaints, that
they need a proper mechanism to quickly investigate and pass of small incidents
to the magistrates courts for persecution without delay, and for more
complicated, and cases involving large frauds, the Commission can do the
needful before presenting the case to the AGs office for prosecution.
I note that the Bribery Commissioner wanted
more staff, and resources, and whilst not saying to give into all these demands,
a unit set up to evaluate the requests and try to improve the efficiency of the
department, where the potential problem is graded, and low grade bribery dealt with
at least cost, by arbitration and accepting guilt!
The subject here is of the Judiciary.
This is a hopelessly paid set of people compared to what lawyers can earn. If a
magistrate is selected from a lawyer who has been in practice for 6 years, why
would a person join the judiciary if he was any good? A decent provincial lawyer
in practice 6 years would have built his own practice and take home Rs500,000 a
month!
With apologies to the good magistrates,
we have too many incompetent magistrates in our system, and some of the lawyers
who defend clients with these magistrates sitting on the bench are aghast at
the judgments made by them, which can have serious consequences in cases.
There are recent cases where Avante
Garde prosecutions have had a set back due to the incompetence of magistrates
ruling against the Govt. stance, due to their ignorance of the case, and lack
of common sense in knowing what questions to ask of the prosecuting and defense
attorneys. We do not have any proof if their independence was compromised.
Frankly we must pay three times the
rates for Magistrates and go all the way up to the Judges of the Supreme Court.
We need top judges who can afford to buy a suit for a cocktail party at the US
Embassy, rather than be too poor to go out whilst their batch mates have
screwed some Multinationals for millions just as appearance fees, and are
paying the Judge a bribe to give a future hearing date, so they can charge
another appearance fee, which has made foreign investors wary of our legal
system. I can tell you personally how heads of legal department of Multinational
Mother Country has told me that our President’s Counsel charge the highest fees
in the world and don’t give a breakdown!
Until we somehow narrow this gap between
the pay of Private Lawyers who scandalously overcharge their clients mainly here
in Sri Lanka, and the Judges who hear these cases who are scandalously underpaid,
we are going to have weaknesses in our Judiciary.
I recommend a system where in order that
the State increases their compensation by more than double, they must be held responsible
to request that the cases be cleared up much quicker and find less reason to keep
postponing due to minor issues, due to sickness of this one or that some of it which
is manufactured!
Any lawyer reading this blog will recognizer
yourself in one or other of the situations and I plead with you to act first as
a citizen of the Country and not in your capacity as wanting to have your cake and
eat it and don’t get into any compromising situations of having to break the code
of Good Governance your self in order that we as a country are able to start our
good governance crusade from the legal system.
So more judges and magistrate courts being
tasked with clearing up minor cases to reduce the load on high court cases. Then
we should tackle the aspect of pay in the way I had proposed, and better working
conditions, especially for outstation work, as now people are less keen on moving
house due to children’s education etc. which was not the case in the past, where
kids were sent to boarding schools!
The competence performance and ability to
speed cases must be evaluated by the Justice Ministry that pays them. The Judiciary
MUST know that the single most important area for FDI into Sri Lanka is a reliable
and speedy Justice system, where a civil or for that matter a criminal case is fairly
and efficiently dealt with independent of influence peddling!
To recap the three continuous blog entries
were an attempt to high light the importance of the Law Enforcement, and Justice
System in setting the foundation for a nation, to progress on Good Governance. All
the rest of development foreign investment and growth in Sri Lanka simply falls
into place if this is done properly and I trust the GOSL to take these pointers
in this series to implement a system of urgent action points to deal with the aforesaid
and lay the foundation for a permanent state of Good Governance that can be the
envy of the world.
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