President Mahinda Rajapaksa removed on Sunday Sri Lankan chief justice Shirani Bandaranayake following Rajapaksa's ruling party's vote in parliament to impeach the country's top judge. The removal was in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling that the impeachment was illegal, thus setting the stage for a possible constitutional crisis. The parliament's move to impeach the chief justice has drawn local and international concerns as it lends weight to the criticism that President Rajapaksa's government is trying to assume such powers in violation of some constitutional provisions. On Friday, Parliament voted overwhelmingly to impeach the chief justice on charges of misuse of power and unexplained wealth. This was a challenge to the country's Supreme Court that in a historic judgment a day earlier has ruled that the impeachment process was unconstitutional. Critics' charges of a clear link between the impeachment move and several judgments the Supreme Court had given last year can't be lightly dismissed. These rulings were clearly not to the liking of the president. In September, the court struck down provisions of a law that would have given greater power to the economic development minister, Basil Rajapaksa, who is the president's brother. The ruling rejecting a bill that went against the government's promise of more autonomy to the Tamil region also infuriated the government. Lawmakers voted 155 to 49 a resolution that lists 14 charges of misconduct by the chief justice. This was only to be expected as Rajapaksa's United People's Freedom Alliance enjoys a two-thirds majority in the house. So there was no surprise when a parliamentary select committee pronounced the chief justice guilty of some charges even before the Friday vote. But instead of meekly resigning, Bandaranayake had challenged in the Court of Appeal the legal authority of a parliamentary committee to investigate the chief justice. The court quashed the panel's findings and sent notices to the PSC members. This indicated that prima facie the chief justice has a case. According to Bandaranayake, the committee acted in violation of the rules of natural justice by not giving her time to defend herself. President Rajapaksa decided on Sunday to take the final step in the impeachment process and removed the chief justice . The Bar Association of Sri Lanka, with 11,000 lawyers, has vowed not to recognize a replacement to Bandaranayake, and the Supreme Court judges may not welcome a new appointee. But the president can ignore all this and go ahead with his plan.The question is whether he should and betray the trust people have placed in him. The nation owes an enormous debt to President Rajapaksa for ending a 25-year civil war in 2009, defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that was fighting for a separate homeland for Tamils in the island's east and north. The civil war led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and devastated Sri Lanka's economy. What Sri Lanka needs now is a period of political stability. And the removal of the chief justice from office does not augur well with this. Even though the Tigers have been defeated, the Tamil problem remains. The Tamil grievances that the Tigers ruthlessly exploited to the detriment of Sri Lanka and the Tamils themselves have to be addressed if the 2009 victory is not to prove hollow. The last thing the island nation now needs is a constitutional crisis that will inevitably follow after the president used the brute advantage he enjoys in Parliament to free his government from the checks and balances that should inform and guide the actions of a democratic government.
