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n the short term, the government can probably get away with it. The president still basks in the popularity of a man who won the war and ended the fighting. Concerns about the way he did so are seen as squeamish foreign bleats. And the economy is forecast to grow by nearly 7% in each of the next five years. The lawyers who this week flew black flags and blew out symbolic candles will lack supporters in Sri Lanka’s villages.In the long run, however, trashing the rule of law has costs. International criticism, centred since 2009 on the failure to give any serious accounting of possible war crimes, now has another angle: the integrity of Sri Lanka’s democracy. Already, in Canada, for example, politicians are calling for a boycott of the Commonwealth summit to be held in Colombo in November. Foreign investors, too, may worry that the legal system has become, in effect, an arm of government.Via http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21569714-sri-lanka-shuffles-further-down-path-dictatorship-and-then-they-came-judges?fsrc=scn%2Ftw_ec%2Fand_then_they_came_for_the_judgessource: https://www.facebook.com/groundviews