It was near midnight last Saturday when a loud explosion rocked the home of human rights lawyer and anti-corruption activist Chrishantha Weliamuna at Dutugemunu Street in Kohuwala.
He was rudely woken. So were his wife Subodhya and the two children, sons who are two and half years and four-months old. If the explosion was chilling enough, sending shivers was another find. There was an unexploded grenade on the balcony. Only one had exploded shattering glass panes and damaging windows on the upper floor.
That Weliamuna and his family narrowly escaped death came as a sigh of relief to his relatives, friends and colleagues. In the heat wave that has gripped greater Colombo, Subodhya often took the infant, who suffered discomfort, to the balcony for some fresh air. However, that night they were asleep. Three days later, an unidentified stalker turned up at the Sri Lanka office of Transparency International at Bullers Lane, Colombo 7.
He pretended to be looking for someone he knew. However, the staff there believed the suspicious intruder was trying to track down Weliamuna, who has since gone into hiding. "I strongly believe I faced this (attack) due to the professional work carried out by me," he told The Sunday Times from his secret location. The 47-year-old lawyer said until last Saturday "I have not received even one telephone call threatening me."
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| UNPers led by General Secretary Tissa Attanayake marching towards the Treasury to hand over their petition. pic by Sanka Vidhanagama |
As the Sri Lanka head of Transparency International, a German-based INGO, Weliamuna has campaigned against Government corruption. It was only last month the organisation declared in a report that Sri Lanka was 92nd in a list of 184 corrupt governments around the world. In addition, last month, he was counsel in a case involving serious police malpractice heard before the Supreme Court. The SC ordered an investigation into allegations of police intimidation and filing of false charges against his client.
Details of the sad saga of Weliamuna and family appear elsewhere in this newspaper. He merits reference in these columns today for the highly disturbing incident he has figured in. Periodically newspapers are replete with reports of lawyers coming under attack. There was one recently where Courts punished the long arm of the law for assaulting a lawyer who, because his conscience forced him, intervened to prevent a citizen being assaulted. He also ended up receiving blows.
The Weliamuna incident is different. Here is a member of the legal profession, who has served as the voice for those oppressed, abused, wronged and robbed, being intimidated for speaking out. Cowards, armed and evidently powerful because they could move around freely in areas where armed soldiers or police officers stand guard in every nook and corner, could get away is no longer a surprising or even shocking phenomenon. Such incidents are all too common in present day Sri Lanka.
The ordeal of Weliamuna and his family lays bare a new trend where, one after another, hallowed democratic institutions are facing new threats. It began with the media. One need hardly catalogue here how media personnel have been mercilessly assaulted, intimidated, harassed and forced into remaining very economical in expressing views different to those in power, expose corrupt activity or malpractices. None of those responsible for attacks on the media has been arrested, leave alone being charged in a court of law.
Now, the hidden hand of the devil has unleashed the campaign of terror on the legal fraternity. Silencing lawyers who throw light on corruption or fight for human rights, they believe, would be the end of such matters coming to light before Courts. They think this would also force others in the legal fraternity into silence. So little by little destroying democratic institutions appears to be the final target.
UNP silent
Ironically, this is at a time when the main Opposition, which has in the past spoken through news releases of the need to protect democratic institutions, is silent now on important issues. One such case, no doubt, is the Weliamuna incident and the threat it poses to the legal fraternity and the larger issues arising out of it. This week the main Opposition was otherwise busy.
A delegation of the United National Party (UNP) led by its General Secretary Tissa Attanayake walked into the Ministry of Finance to hand over a letter to the Secretary to the Treasury. The party was appealing to him to bring down fuel prices. However, Government leaders felt the delegation was using the opportunity to ascertain whether P.B. Jayasundera, resigned as Treasury Secretary, was still in some office there. They, however, handed over the letter to the new Secretary, Sumith Abeysinghe.
Some UNPers were not happy at the move and asked why the letter had to be addressed to the Secretary to the Treasury who was powerless to take a political decision like lowering fuel prices. They argued that the party should have created further public awareness on the issue and thus pressured Government leaders.
The three-page letter signed by Attanayake noted that the UNP is "perturbed by the fact that the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) with the explicit support by the Ministry of Petroleum and Petroleum Resource Development, has vowed not to reduce the retail price of petroleum products in Sri Lanka at a time when global prices are nose diving.
It adds: "As you are aware, average crude oil prices have fallen from USD 147 per barrel to USD 96 per barrel in the past few months; a price crop of more than one third. ……..Furthermore the Government has pre-empted the expected price reduction by Lanka-Indian Oil Company (LIOC) via the new Cess without any consideration in harnessing the competition that the two players are expected into market pricing of fuel."
Besides the global prices of crude oil being outside Government control, the UNP letter says there are numerous other components that ultimately determine selling prices. Here are a few of the many aspects listed by the UNP:
Financial mismanagement of CPC: Perusal of the CPC accounts for the last few years clearly indicates the continuing deterioration of its financial position. For instance, finance charges of the CPC have dramatically increased due, inter alia, to the inability or unwillingness to collect monies owed to the Corporation. Such institutions include the Ceylon Electricity Board, Railways, the Sri Lanka Transport Board, Sri Lanka Ports Authority and the People's Bank. Providing Rs 600 million in fuel supplies to bankrupt Mihin Air has now become a liability to the public is well known.
Dependence on Iran: Whilst the CPC in the past had taken measures to diversify its sources to supply for strategic and economic reasons, we are made to understand that some 90 per cent of CPC's crude oil requirement is now purchased from Iran on terms which are not the most favourable. Whilst Iran is providing CPC four months credit, we also note that CPC is called upon to pay a very high premium of US $ 1 to 2 per barrel (as opposed to much lower premiums from other local suppliers) which negates the benefit of the credit.
Refinery: By not expanding the refinery in the last four years, CPC is continuing to price petroleum products based on imported finished products. If the proposal that was in place in 2004 was implemented, all our requirements would have been based on production of local refinery. The current proposal for refinery expansion with the National Iranian Oil Company is highly detrimental to the Government when compared to previous proposal on a BOOT basis.
Even if the Treasury officials have not said so, the fate of the UNP letter is quite clear. It will either go to the waste paper basket or gather dust in some file or the other. The fact that the main Opposition party is unable to muster public opinion on an issue that affects every citizen of Sri Lanka, besides hand carrying a letter to the Treasury, augurs ill for its future campaigns, especially with rumours of elections of one sort or another in the air. Not so long ago, lamenting over the mounting cost of living, some UNP parliamentarians turned up on the streets to dash clay pots on the ground. Mostly used ones, could still have served as flowerpots. Only a few housewives lost their pots and there ended the campaign.
A sad lack of imagination seems to affect the party and this appears even more painfully evident at a time when this government’s media machine is proactive at all levels.
The UNP however is now looking to take the matter further. This week its leadership indicated the party would ask for a parliamentary Select Committee to go into the price of petrol.
They are likely to ask the Select Committee to ask why - and who went into the hedging process of purchasing petrol especially when prices were so high. They feel that there has been some hanky-panky involved in the exercise. The CPC argument that they purchased oil in the world market when prices were high seems a little more than bad judgement on the part of the authorities. That the Supreme Court recently ruled that no less a person than the head of the Treasury had been engaged in corrupt practices, has thrown the reputation of the entire Government into question.
One of the other matters the Opposition was discussing was the announcement that a Cabinet sub-committee was to go into a speech that Justice Saleem Marsoof had recently made in the course of the (former Attorney General) K.C. Kamalasabeyson memorial oration where he was critical of certain aspects of the way the authorities were handling matters following the landmark Supreme Court judgment on Lanka Marine Service Ltd.,
The Government was going to study whether Justice Marsoof was in breach of Parliament Privilege. This is an interesting development. One is almost seeing the beginning of a clash between the Executive and the Judiciary - with the Executive (the Government) trying to rope in the Legislature (Parliament), and a right royal tussle between the three main arms of the State coming into conflict with one another.
The role of the UNP and the rest of the Opposition vis-à-vis this conflict would be an interesting one to see. The Supreme Court has come in for some praise this week from at least one front-liner of the UNP, John Amaratunga, for the judgments it is delivering against the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration.
A visit by UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe to his erstwhile deputy Karu Jayasuriya at the Asiri hospital has given rise to speculation of further re-alignments. Public Administration and Home Affairs Minister Jayasuriya is in hospital recuperating from a six-hour stomach operation, which was conducted at the Kalubowila hospital. Wickremesinghe spent close to an hour chatting with Jayasuriya and family.
The UNP leader’s visit was soon followed by a visit to the hospitalised Minister by UNP’s General Secretary Tissa Attanayake.
The visits came in the midst of a move by the ruling coalition to make the seventeen UNP MPs who crossed over with Karu Jayasuriya to the Government last year as organisers for various electorates.
With speculation that elections will be held next year, given the fact that so much money is to be voted to the Commissioner of Elections, interesting alignments and re-alignments not only in the political, but also in the relationships between the Government and the Judiciary will be exciting to watch. |
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