States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

with wide and deep ramiLications in a deeply divided and conLlictaffected
society. Admittedly, the then government enjoyed an
unusual 5/6 th majority in Parliament which allowed it to impose
its will, at will, but in the context of a crisis, this merely eased the
way for an ill thought out and reactionary measure.
3.2.4
Normalisation
of
the
Exception
As we established at the very outset, the fundamental analytical
perspective of this discussion is the liberal democratic assumption
of the separation between emergency and normalcy. Without this
assumption, or indeed normative principle, no critique of the
‘permanence’ of the Sri Lankan state of emergency makes any
sense. Yet, international experience reLlects the Sri Lankan
experience more‐or‐less, in that the exception has a tendency of
becoming normalised fairly easily. Extraordinary powers given to
a government to meet an exceptional threat come over time to be
treated as normal and part of the government’s ordinary corpus of
powers. If one of the purposes of the assumption of
exceptionalism in respect of emergency powers is to ensure a
return to ‘normality’ in the sense of a retraction of those powers
as soon as is possible, then this phenomenon clearly counteracts
that aim.
As we shall see, it is not only governments that grow accustomed
to these powers and their convenience; other institutions
including the judiciary also become attuned to expansive executive
powers. Through a false sense of security, the public’s tolerance of
expansive government and incursions into individual liberty
increases. Mill saw the dangers of this: “Evil for evil, a good
despotism, in a country at all advanced in civilisation, is more
noxious than a bad one; for it is far more relaxing and enervating
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