Constitutional Ping-Pong
Sri Lanka is at a moment of reckoning, with its political class, its public institutions and with its collective identity. The rupture caused by this unprecedented and tragic crisis has brought the country to a unique political moment in which the majority of Sri Lankans are demanding and imagining a better collective future. For the first time in Sri Lanka’s history, the demands for constitutional governance articulated through traditions of protest and dissent expressed mostly by marginalized groups are now being echoed by the mainstream.
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Sri Lanka’s Legal Response to COVID-19: Past Trends and Future Prospects
In the midst of this public health emergency, Sri Lanka’s legal system has contributed little if anything to Sri Lanka’s response to Covid-19 since March 2020. The legal system has been expected to and in a large part has in fact been “kept out of the way” of the political actors. In this post I will provide an overview of the GoSL’s legal and political response to Covid-19 and will highlight the implications of key actions on the rule of law and democratic governance. I will thereafter briefly capture the outlook for 2021.
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