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BASL ExCo to discuss UN Resolution on SL and its implications
View(s):The Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) will discuss the UN Resolution on Sri Lanka and its implications, at their next Executive Committee meeting scheduled for next week, said BASL President Geoffrey Alagaratnam.
The Resolution has recommended the inclusion of foreign Judges, Defence Lawyers and authorised Prosecutors and Investigators within the Judicial Mechanism the government is to set up to investigate allegations of violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has requested the BASL to formulate necessary mechanisms to allow foreign counsel in the process, whenever the need arises.
However Mr Alagaratnam said the Executive Committee meeting will not discuss any specifics. “We would be only looking at the Resolution as a whole and its implications,” he said.
According to current regulations, a lawyer needs to have taken oaths in the Supreme Court to appear in Sri Lankan courts, for which the individual has to sit for qualifying examinations held by the Council of Legal Education. However, there has been no precedence on the matter to date.
For an individual to be appointed a judge in the Superior Courts in the country, he/she has to be either from a lower court, from the official Bar or the private Bar, explained Principal of Law College, Dr. Jayatissa de Costa P.C.
“We follow the British tradition from colonial times, but everything is clearly laid out in the Constitution,” he explained. The only instance was when three Commonwealth judges were invited to the Commission of Inquiry in the Bandaranaike Assassination.
That inquiry was held before 1972 when a Republican Constitution was introduced and Sri Lanka severed all links to the British sovereign but remained a member of the Commonwealth.