The changing of the Constitution is not an easy task and the country will get into a constitutional mess if the government tries to implement the original policy of governing the Colombo International Financial Centre (CIFC) in the Port City through a separate legal framework based on English laws, a leading lawyer said.
“In Sri Lanka, unless you change the Constitution, you cannot have one place for English law and the rest of the country to have Sri Lankan law,” Dr. Harsha Cabral, PC told a panel discussion in Colombo last week. Speaking at a foreign policy forum on strategies and normative issues of foreign policy, he said that Sri Lanka needs to focus more on having Sri Lankan law in operation. He expressed disappointment over Sri Lanka’s inability to have a similar judicial and arbitration system as in Singapore’s financial centre.
“With Port City, it is rather unfortunate that we won’t have the same mechanisms as in Singapore,” he said.
Singaporean Member of Parliament Prof. Mahdev Mohan said, “Singapore’s financial centre has a separate legal system based on English law, which makes arbitration decisions and the judicial rulings on commercial matters made there are acceptable globally.” Singapore established the Singapore International Commercial Court in 2015 and also has an international arbitration centre. - SJ