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BASL to seek revision of ‘Singarasa Case’ judgment
View(s):The Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) will file papers in the Supreme Court seeking a revision of the Supreme Court judgment on the popularly known ‘Singarasa Case’.
Former BASL President Upul Jayasuriya, a member of the BASL Executive Committee (ExCo), said the Committee took up a statement made by Prime Minister (PM) Ranil Wickremesinghe in Parliament, asking the Speaker to make a ruling regarding the Supreme Court judgment on the ‘Singarasa Case’. The BASL’s ExCo had looked into the PM’s statement and had found he had been right to take the matter up by raising a Point of Order. The ‘Singarasa Case’, Mr. Jayasuriya said, was a “total abuse of the course of justice by then Chief Justice Sarath Silva.”
In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Presidency had acted in excess of its powers by entering Sri Lanka as a signatory to the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (ICCPR).
“The matter that came before the Supreme Court was not to make a judgment on the Optional Protocol. Without making a judgment on ‘Singarasa’s Case’, they ruled that the Optional Protocol had been wrongly entered into by the Government of Sri Lanka. The Supreme Court had no power to adjudicate on that in terms of a criminal appeal,” Mr. Jayasuriya stressed.
“As such, the BASL has now decided to intervene in the matter in the interest of the judiciary and the public, by filing papers in the Supreme Court seeking a revision of this order,” he elaborated. Accordingly, the BASL has decided to seek the intervention of Faizer Mustapha P.C. and Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne to file papers on behalf of the BASL.