This is true of Sri Lanka now more than at any other time in the past. Time and time again since independence we have stood constitutional fundamentals on their head when a particular political contingency had arisen. Each time, we have pushed the limits of legitimacy just that little bit further. This time around however, we have surpassed ourselves in the manner in which we are allowing our politicians to put the country at stake.

Thus, on the one hand, we have the Government putting across conditions to the President which stipulate her agreement to constitutional amendments transferring power to dissolve Parliament to the Parliament, bringing in a conscience voting bill and the administration of a committee system akin to the Donoughmore system. Failing agreement on these changes, the Wickremesinghe administration has stated that it would move for a confidence vote on the government and thereafter for dissolution of Parliament. On her part, President Kumaratunga has said that she would not agree to ad hoc amendments to the Constitution. And so, we have the most extreme of political stalemates, aggravated meanwhile by quite disgustingly immoral political theories evolved by People's Alliance strongman, former Minister Sarath Amunugama whose belief it is that the primary duty of the opposition is to become the government in the shortest possible time.

Apart from its obvious effect on current peace negotiations with the LTTE, the effect of this political tug-of -war on the economy is already apparent. We have also had delaying tactics adopted on the repeal of the Special Presidential Commissions of Inquiry Act with it being referred to a committee of experts. And one is compelled to ask in this context, are we indeed willing to let this absurd state of affairs continue? And why is it that constitutional and right debate in Sri Lanka at present continues to be confined to this antagonistic takes between politicians with a strongly manifested absence of other voices. Instead, we have tight little coteries in their politicised corners, debating on whether one can do this with the Constitution or that with the Constitution, with a consequent abandoning of the legitimate for the merely legal. On the one hand, we have the continuing silence of Civil Rights Movement, which had been distinguished for its immediate and effective interventions on almost each and every issue of importance touching our political and constitutional fabric for the past more than four decades. It was the Civil Rights Movement that, for example, highlighted the numerous problems with the Special Presidential Commissions of Inquiry Law when it was used as a political tool by United National Party governments of the past. On the other hand, we have lobbying organisations such as the Bar Association reduced to what one is can only categorise as a pitiful non-existence. Indeed, the fate that has befallen the Bar Association in this country is peculiarly sad for more reasons than one.

Within the last fifty years, Sri Lanka has seen a convoluted playing out of Bench-Bar relations. On occasions, this interplay has been particularly strong as evidenced in the seventies when executive attempts to politicize the judiciary were met with strong opposition from the Bar. In other instances, the legal profession might have been bolder as a powerful executive president transformed the face of the country's political system and trespassed without conscience on the preserves of an independent judiciary by "reconstituting" the appellate judiciary under the 1978 Constitution, allowing judges to be personally intimidated when unpopular decisions were delivered and bringing a sitting Chief Justice before Parliament for remarks perceived as being critical of the government.

The late eighties and particularly the nineties saw however the gradual development of an interventionist Bar and a concerned Bench preoccupied with issues of social justice and effectively working the fundamental rights chapter under the Constitution in this regard. Rights focused interventions into governance became as a matter of course though this assumption of judicial authority, hampered as it was by restrictive constitutional provisions, did not come anywhere near what India experienced from the late seventies. Regardless, as tensions exacerbated between the executive and the judiciary following authoritative judicial pronouncements reining in the executive, the inability of the legal profession to absorb and control the political fall out became clear. This profound breach of faith on the part of the Bar occurred ironically enough, not so much in 1988-89 where the country saw unparalleled dislocation of normal life and unprecedented violence directly affecting lawyers. Rather, it was in the ostensibly calmer but morally more crippling years from the late 1990's.

Thus in the nineties, President Chandrika Kumaratunga and her Ministers engaged in intemperate and inaccurate criticism of selected Supreme Court judges following particular judgements delivered by the Court. While judges' houses were not stoned this time around, the effect of such executive anger was none the less devastating. The Bar however was silent. This pattern of extraordinary inactivity on the part of the country's legal profession is best seen in the contrasting manner in which the Bar responded to crucial appointments to the post of Chief Justice of the country at different periods of time. Thus, a united opposition by the Bar to executive departure from time honoured convention was manifest in the 1980's despite significant differences of political opinion on the part of senior members of the Bar. In contrast however, facing a similar situation in the nineties, an indecisive Bar preferred a problematic silence to valour. This was despite clear political considerations dictating the decision of the executive in both instances and indeed in a much more worrying context in the nineties than at any other time in the past.

Thus, one may well ask as to what distinguishes the past from the present as far as Sri Lanka's legal profession is concerned? A corrosively politicised Sri Lankan Bar provides an easy answer to this question. The issue can be simply put. Every lawyer, as every other citizen in this country, undoubtedly has the right to profess private political views. Equally, there have been lawyers in the past identified with the government but that has not prevented them from taking an independent stand on matters of national concern. But an unabashed crossing of this private-professional divide over the years has resulted in detriment to the profession itself. What other profession has, for example, groups of its members forming themselves into organisations that support one political party or another? Promises of activist interventions to "depoliticise" the Bar held out at particular times have not had sustained force. Instead, the Bar has come to acquiesce in the formation of an insecure political culture resentful of intellectual independence and judicial strength. Correspondingly, its public image and its capacity to take on the role of a strong actor in protecting entrenched constitutional values has weakened. We saw this in its in ineffectual interventions in the year 2000 when the Kumaratunga government attempted to push through a Third Republican constitution amidst dubious political and legal maneuvering as we see this ineffective now. Thus, we have the engagement of "mighty opposites" so manifest in India for example through an active if not activist Bar and the Bench, averted by a hair's breadth in Sri Lanka to the undoubted relief of the executive but with deleterious consequences to the people. In time, this will amount to nothing short of an intellectual reducing of the Sri Lankan legal system in the South Asian sub continent. The historical responsibility that the leaders of the Bar will be called upon to shoulder in this respect is therefore onerous.

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