Supreme Court concludes hearing 15 challenges to Government amendments as petitioners warn proposed changes could weaken safeguards, judicial oversight and the public’s right to information
On the very day Sri Lanka was absorbed by the arrest and remand of Namal Rajapaksa in one of the country’s biggest corruption investigations, another important anti-corruption battle was unfolding rather more quietly inside the Supreme Court.
The Court yesterday concluded the hearing of 15 petitions challenging the constitutionality of the Government’s proposed Anti-Corruption (Amendment) Bill. After two days of arguments, the three-member bench announced that its confidential determination would be communicated to the Speaker and the President, with parties given until Monday to complete written submissions.
Submit Your Press Release
Get your company news, announcements, launches, appointments and events in front of a wider audience.
The petitions were heard by Justices Shiran Gooneratne, Mahinda Samayawardhena and Sampath Wijeratne. Petitioners include Transparency International Sri Lanka, former Minister Professor G.L. Peiris and the Media Law Forum, among others.
Their objections go considerably further than technical complaints about legislative drafting. Petitioners have argued that provisions of the Bill threaten fundamental rights and judicial powers, with some asking the Supreme Court to determine that the proposed law requires not merely a special majority in Parliament but approval by the People at a referendum.
Transparency International Sri Lanka has raised particularly serious concerns. It argues that amendments could weaken the asset declaration regime, restrict meaningful access to information and remove an important element of judicial oversight where the anti-corruption authorities decide not to prosecute an accomplice who provides information.
That last issue has acquired an interesting relevance.
Sri Lanka is presently watching a major corruption investigation in which the evidence of one individual concerning the alleged movement of money has become important to proceedings against another. The Namal Rajapaksa case and the constitutional challenge to the Anti-Corruption Amendment Bill are separate legal matters and should not be artificially conflated, but both remind us why the rules governing witnesses, accomplices, prosecutors and independent oversight matter.
A country serious about fighting corruption requires investigators capable of following money into bank accounts, companies and jurisdictions around the world. It also requires mechanisms permitting people with knowledge of corrupt transactions to provide evidence capable of exposing those ultimately responsible.
But considerable power requires considerable safeguards.
A decision to prosecute can change a person’s life. So can a decision not to prosecute somebody else. If an accomplice is spared prosecution in return for disclosure, the process by which that decision is made must command confidence both inside the courtroom and outside it.
That is ultimately why the constitutional challenge matters.
Sri Lanka desperately needs an effective anti-corruption law. It needs a strong and genuinely independent CIABOC capable of investigating presidents, ministers, officials, businessmen and anybody else against whom credible evidence exists.
What it does not need is an anti-corruption regime so powerful that accountability over the investigators themselves becomes weaker.
The Supreme Court must now decide where that constitutional balance lies.
At almost precisely the moment the State is demonstrating how powerful its anti-corruption machinery can be, the country’s highest court is being asked to decide how powerful that machinery should become.
That is a coincidence worth watching.
Be that as it may.
