Every nation gets the judiciary it tolerates, not the one it deserves. For twenty two million Sri Lankans, the next few months will determine whether our Republic remains a functioning democracy or descends into a judicial oligarchy where one man’s ambition overrides decades of constitutional tradition.
Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena, whose term is lawfully scheduled to end in December 2026, has reportedly requested a two year extension from the President. Never in the long proud history of the Sri Lankan judiciary has a sitting justice, let alone a Chief Justice, asked for or been granted an extension. Not under the Soulbury Constitution, not under the 1978 Constitution, not during the darkest days of the insurrections or the civil war. Why now, and why this Chief Justice?
The analysis that follows is not speculative alarmism. It is a clinical diagnosis of a system in advanced decay. When the head of the judiciary is himself the subject of multiple credible allegations, including past mental incapacity, allegiance to a non traditional religious group often locally referred to as a cult, and a political pact to immunize the ruling class while prosecuting the opposition, the three pillars of judicial independence shatter simultaneously. The judiciary relies entirely on its perceived neutrality, intellectual rigor, and institutional autonomy to function effectively. A court order is obeyed not because a judge holds a gun but because the citizen believes the judge is neutral.
If the Chief Justice is perceived as a man who secured his position through a broken Constitutional Council where the opposition failed its veto duty and now seeks to extend his tenure through personal lobbying rather than constitutional process, then every judgment he has ever authored becomes suspect. Every injunction, every criminal acquittal, every contempt ruling carries the stench of a pre negotiated outcome.
We are already witnessing top down administrative restructuring that bypasses seniority. Judges who wish to rise know exactly which ideological signals to send. This is not conjecture but the lived reality of a bench where loyalists are fast tracked and independent voices are marginalized. When the Chief Justice himself breaks convention to cling to power, what message does that send to a district judge who must rule against a minister tomorrow? Under this tenure, we have seen the aggressive prosecution of opposition figures while ruling party members implicated in ongoing corruption cases walk free. A compromised Chief Justice does not merely fail to stop this but actively enables it. The judiciary has morphed from the shield of the weak into the sword of the powerful.
Let us now turn to the constitutional absurdity of a personal request. The retirement age for Supreme Court justices is sixty five years, subject to subsequent amendments, but an extension, a discretionary extra constitutional grant of additional years beyond the statutory limit or beyond the natural expiration of a fixed term, has no textual basis in Article 107 or any other provision of the Constitution.
The President is the custodian of the executive, not the monarch who dispenses judicial tenure as royal favour. If the President grants this extension, he does so in violation of the principle of separation of powers by treating judicial office as an executive concession, the rule against post retirement service for superior court judges which is a bedrock convention inherited from English common law and uninterrupted in Sri Lankan practice, the mandate of the Constitutional Council which was bypassed entirely in this personal request, and the fundamental expectation of fixed predictable judicial terms without which judicial independence becomes judicial servitude. To grant this extension is to declare that the Constitution is a menu of suggestions, not a binding contract between the state and the people.
(Author unknown)
