(Dr) Jayampathy Wickramaratne, President’s Counsel
(Lanka-e-News -18.April.2021, 10.45PM) The Colombo Port Economic Commission Bill was presented in Parliament on 08 April 2021, while the country was getting ready to celebrate the traditional New Year. With the intervening weekend and three public holidays, citizens had just two working days to retain lawyers, many of whom were on vacation, and file applications challenging the constitutionality of the Bill in the Supreme Court within the one-week period stipulated in the Constitution. One wonders whether the timing was deliberate.
The Bar Association of Sri Lanka said in a statement that it was extremely concerned about the limited time given for scrutiny and discussion of this important Bill, as well as the timing of placing the Bill on the Order Paper of Parliament, which was after the suspension of sittings of the Supreme Court, a time when many members of the legal profession are unavailable. Because the period of one week within which the Bill could be challenged before the Supreme Court to determine its constitutionality, included not only the weekend but also three public holidays, members of the public have been deprived of a meaningful opportunity to scrutinise the Bill and to discuss its merits.