States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

in force, gives rise to several issues when viewed against the
conceptual requirements of the models of accommodation and
international standards set out in Part I of this book. The general
observations in this section are grouped under the main elements
of a framework of emergency powers in the discussion in Part I:
(a) the deLinition of emergency; (b) the legal framework for the
declaration, extension and termination of an emergency; (c) the
legal effects of a declaration of emergency; and (d) the framework
of institutional checks and balances. These elements, or
conceptual features, of the model of legal accommodation of
emergencies as we saw, inform both the design of constitutional
frameworks for states of democracy in liberal democracies as well
as the derogation framework under the ICCPR. The following
discussion should thus be treated as an exercise in recapitulative
assessment of the Sri Lankan framework in the light of these
conceptual, comparative, international considerations.
5.4.1
The
Debinition
of
‘State
of
Public
Emergency’
The Sri Lankan constitution in Chapter XVIII does not provide a
formal deLinition of what conditions precipitate and constitutes a
state of emergency. Instead, the description or deLinition of the
conditions that may give rise to the implementation of emergency
powers are provided in Section 2 (1) of the PSO. The PSO is the
statutory elaboration of the constitutional framework in Chapter
XVIII.
The PSO has an interesting provenance (and history of
amendments), in that it was passed in 1947 as an urgent bill just
prior to independence with minimal legislative debate. The
hurried process has given rise to inevitable political analysis about
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