The Bar Association of Sri Lanka organized a felicitation dinner on 12th may at the Oak Room, Cinnamon Grand Hotel Colombo , to honour those who have completed fifty years at the Bar.
The Felicitation Dinner was organized by the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) to honour 26 individuals who have served at the Bar for 50 or more years.
During the Felicitation Dinner, President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has also completed fifty years at the Bar, was honoured and presented with a plaque by Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya PC.
Juliana Margaret Coswatte, Walter Leslie deRatnasabapathy Arumugam Jegatheson, Upali A. Gooneratne PC, Kanagaratnam Kaneshayogan, Vijaya Niranjan Perera PC, Vernon Manilal Fernando, Justice J. Asoka Nihal de Silva, PC,W. D. J. Seneviratne, Justice D. J. De S. Balapatabendi was also felicitated at the ceremony.
M M Zuhair President’s Counsel completes 50 years at the Bar having been enrolled as Advocates of the Supreme Court on 23rd May 1972 before the then Chief Justice H N G Fernando and Justice C B Walgampaya.
Following the promulgation of the first Republican Constitution of Sri Lanka on 22nd May 1972, Upali Gooneratne and M M Zuhair became the first set of lawyers to take oaths as Advocates under the new Republican Constitution drafted by Dr Colvin R de Silva and which became the supreme law of the country on 22nd May. Zuhair is an alumnus of the Sri Lanka Law College (1968-1970) headed at the time by late R K W Gunasekera, its distinguished Principal.
At Law College he won the Asia Foundation scholarship award, which covered the entire cost of his legal education from 1968 to 1970. He was elected the Editor of the Law Students’ Union of the Law College in 1970 and the President of the Law Students’ Muslim Majlis in 1971.
He apprenticed under Advocate S Sharvananda who later became the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka and Advocate Malcolm Perera who later became a Judge of the Supreme court.
Zuhair was appointed President’s Counsel in 2001 and has an active practice in the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and in the original courts in the island handling criminal cases, fundamental rights cases and writ applications.
Zuhair joined the Attorney General’s department as a State Counsel in 1973. He was encouraged to join the Attorney General’s department by Justice Pathmanathan Ramanathan who was then a Senior State Counsel, having seen Zuhair argue a criminal appeal in the Court of Appeal, in the latter’s first year of practice. Zuhair served the State for ten years, the first five years in the civil side and the second five years in the criminal side. He prosecuted in bribery cases, in murder trials and prevention of terrorism cases in the High Court and also appeared for the State in criminal appeals. He was promoted as a Senior State Counsel in 1981 but reverted to the unofficial bar in 1983 soon after the July 1983 riots.
In the unofficial bar he had an extensive practice handling mainly criminal cases as well as writ applications in the superior courts. From 1994 to 2000, Zuhair was a Member of Parliament on the Peoples’ Alliance National List in the Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga government, nominated by the then Leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress M H M Ashraff. He served in several parliamentary committees.
On 23rd July 2001, President Chandrika Bandaranaike appointed a three member Presidential Truth Commission on the Ethnic Violence (1981 -1984) headed by retired Chief Justice S Sharvananda and comprising S S Sahabandu PC and M M Zuhair PC. The Commission investigated the July 1983 Sinhala-Tamil riots recorded evidence relating to the burning down of the well- known Jaffna Public Library (31/5/1981), Jaffna DDC Elections (4 /06/1981), Ethnic riots (23/07/1983 onwards) and the Welikada Prison massacres (25th &26th July 1983) and reported thereon, published as Sessional Paper No III-2003. The Commission was assisted by then State Counsel and present Supreme Court Judge Justice A H M D. Nawaz with S M J Senaratne of the SLAS as Secretary.
In 2004 and 2005, Zuhair headed the national TV as Chairman, Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC) and also served as the Chairman of the Board Governors of Zahira College, Colombo. He was appointed as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Iran in 2006 by President Mahinda Rajapakse but resigned in 2012 following growing anti-Muslim tensions in Sri Lanka.
Zuhair is an old boy of Arafa Central College, Weligama (1952-1957), St John’s College, Colombo 9 (1957-1962) and Zahira College, Colombo (1963-1965).
Presently Zuhair continues his legal practice.
Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya PC, Attorney General Sanjay Rajaratnam PC, BASL President Saliya Peiris, Chairman of the Felicitation Committee Janaprith Fernando and Convener of the Felicitation Committee Chamath Fernando addressed the Felicitation Dinner.
