{"id":13487,"date":"2012-12-11T22:27:38","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T03:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=13487"},"modified":"2012-12-11T22:27:38","modified_gmt":"2012-12-12T03:27:38","slug":"president-rajapaksa-to-appoint-independent-panel-to-review-select-committee-report-on-impeachment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=13487","title":{"rendered":"President Rajapaksa to Appoint Independent panel to review Select Committee report on Impeachment"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dharisha Bastians<\/strong><\/p>\n

P<\/strong>resident Mahinda Rajapaksa will appoint an independent panel to review the Parliamentary Select Committee report on the impeachment charges against Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, as opposition to the fiasco gathers more steam.<\/p>\n

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President Rajapaksa, speaking at the inauguration of a new building for the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) at Malalasekera Mawatha yesterday said he was not mandated by law to appoint an independent panel to perform the review, but was doing so to assuage his own conscience.
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\n\u201cI am also a lawyer. I do not like to see the judicial system undermined. I am ultimately accountable only to my conscience. This situation is saddening me,\u201d the President said, in reference to the furore created by the process adopted to impeach the country\u2019s senior-most judge.<\/p>\n

The PSC on Saturday submitted its report to Parliament and the Committee, which finally comprised only Government members. It found the Chief Justice guilty on three charges levelled against her and exonerated her on two. Only five of the 14 charges levelled in the motion of impeachment were taken up for inquiry by the PSC.<\/p>\n

The report came less than 36 hours after Chief Justice Bandaranayake and her lawyers walked out of the Committee citing a lack of faith in the process and less than 12 hours after the four Opposition MPs on the committee quit in protest at the unjustness of the proceedings and the derogatory treatment allegedly meted out to the Head of the country\u2019s Judiciary by Government members on the PSC.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone has made a mistake, those mistakes don\u2019t need to be dragged out into the public,\u201d the President said, adding that he would appoint an independent committee to review the PSC\u2019s decisions before the report is implemented.<\/p>\n

According to the President, 117 MPs signed the impeachment and showed the motion to him, but he was not in favour of going ahead with the process. \u201cBut we have a Parliament. And Parliament has decided that the PSC must submit a report,\u201d he said. \u201cUltimately, I must be able to work according to my conscience and for that reason, even though I am not legally mandated to do so, I will appoint a panel to go into this,\u201d the President said.<\/p>\n

Pressure is mounting on the Government against the impeachment process, with courts around the country poised to come to a standstill tomorrow to decry the fact that the Chief Justice was not granted a fair trial. Lawyers and judges are mobilising at breakneck pace in protest of what they call an illegal and politicised process adopted by the PSC. Courtesy: The Fianancial Times<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Dharisha Bastians President Mahinda Rajapaksa will appoint an independent panel to review the Parliamentary Select Committee report on the impeachment charges against Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, as opposition to the fiasco gathers more steam. President Rajapaksa, speaking at the inauguration of a new building for the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘President Rajapaksa to Appoint Independent panel to review Select Committee report on Impeachment’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13487"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13491,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13487\/revisions\/13491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}