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The ancient Greeks had a word for it. They called it Hubris, extreme pride and arrogance which revolt the gods. The pride that blinds, the arrogance that deludes, the tragic flaw that invites Nemesis, the remorseless Goddess of Divine Retribution, to rap the door of the guilty and to deliver Heaven’s comeuppance.

If it was Nemesis to the Greeks, it was fate to the Christians and karma to the Buddhist. And many who bore the torch of power and outraged the divine attributes of man, who recklessly expended the nation’s wealth and squandered it on gratifying their own lust and avarice at the people’s expense, must now await the appointed hour for Nemesis to make her house call and say ‘Open Sesame’ before Ali Baba’s Cave of Thieves.
Those who tap danced their way across the uppermost echelons of power thinking the feast would never end, must brace themselves to the hollow silence when the music stills and a new conductor takes the baton. The bulky bags of wretched sin cannot be left behind at office; the burden must be borne upon the head even though the crown has been laid aside. There can be no rest for the wicked till sins are expiated; the shadow of Nemesis will forever fall and follow the doer. That is the karmic law of cause and effect, the Christian law of reaping the whirlwind and the man made law of crime and punishment.

This is the painful lesson that those who abused their powers and plundered the wealth of twenty million people of Lanka are slowly learning: That thieves fall out. That adversity makes men turn treacherous. That truth will out. That the make-believe world they built on thievery on the volatile foundations of injustice, will one day crash when fate cashes the dated cheques of fraud begotten by corruption.

Had it been 18th century France immediately after the revolution, the people would be at the gates, crying for blood, waiting to hear the guillotine fall, to see the tumbrels cart off the heads that have rolled. 21st century Lankans do not wish for such a brutal ‘reign of terror’ to follow a new dawn of maithri, an era of loving kindness, but they do expect and impatiently wait for the guilty to be brought to justice and to stand in the dock and to see punishments that meet their crimes to be meted out to them.

And aren’t the masses justified to clamour for the justice they were promised they would receive if Maithripala Sirisena was elected? For before January 8, didn’t the opposition election platforms rumble with the thunder of corruption claims made against the Rajapaksa regime? Didn’t they reverberate and resound with strident pledges of bringing the guilty to book, to call them to account for the wholesale plunder of Lanka, which today the Maithripala Government has placed at a staggering US$ 5.6 billion or Rs. 733 billion being the sum siphoned off from the nation’s coffers by the Rajapaksa regime?

With such a mind blowing sum claimed to have been stolen, where are the much promised arrests? The smoke is there, all right, but where’s the fire?

Most probably there would have been arrests had not the fraud been so gigantic in scale, so complex in design and so entangled in its execution, that Maithripala Sirisena, like Alexander the Great, may have to slice this Gordian knot of financial deception, in order to disentangle it, if at all.
In this regard the Government has already begun the process and presently appears to be sharpening the knives. On January 22, the Government appealed to the World Bank and the IMF to extend their indispensable support to the Government to trace the plundered loot. Last Saturday Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera flew to Washington to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry and also to discuss this matter with the relevant officials of the World Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery Unit. He is expected to hand over a list of names of UPFA leaders and senior officials who have allegedly amassed foreign assets. On February 3, India announced that in response to a request from the Lankan Government, India will set up a joint Financial Investigative Unit (FIU) to help track down the missing billions. The Lankan President is expected to discuss this matter further with the Indian Prime Minister Modi in Delhi this week.

Then on Monday, President Sirisena announced the appointment of a special presidential commission to probe large-scale corruption and fraud and reaffirmed his pledge to punish the guilty. The new commission is expected to be invested with the authority to deprive the civic rights of those found guilty and will be designed to achieve the same aim as the Indian laws which debarred former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram from contesting elections for a period of ten years.

The commission would be modelled on the Criminal Justice Commission set up in 1972 by Sirima Bandaranaike. According to Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, a special mechanism was necessary to inquire into the allegations in major cases and the new commission would in the main be a judicial body to probe mega cases. The SPC would be for the super corrupt, those who boast their plunder in terms of billions.

So much for the whaling operation which, understandably, requires proper logistical planning and time before the harpoons can be released. It must be understood by all that there is a great difference between making charges standing on a soap box at London’s Hyde Park and framing indictments that will stand up in a court of law with the required amount of evidence to substantiate the accusations.

But what about the smaller second league sharks still free to lurk the waters? They will be dealt with by the Bribery and Corruption Office, now the small rogues’ court for those with accusations running to only a few hundred millions. And there have been plenty of those too. In fact over three hundred complaints have been lodged but upto, apart from a few passports being impounded, not a single arrest has ensued.

The appointment of a new Director General of the Bribery Commission, Dilkurshi Dias Wickramasinghe, on Wednesday by the President will hopefully change the lethargy that has set in and kick start the office to life. The Commission has had three hundred officers but by the end of last year the number had dwindled to 150. Ms. Wickramasinghe should first inquire into the competency of the existing staff. Long years warming their seats having no proper investigations to carry out, apart from some rare case involving a school principal, perhaps, allegedly accepting a small bribe, may have dulled their efficiency and rendered them totally unsuitable to be in charge of probes into corruptions running into millions. Furthermore their political inclinations should also be reviewed to ensure that devious politicians, against whom the complaints have been made, do not pay private visits and persuade them to tip the scales in their favour.

For the last few weeks it has been mainly left to the JVP to visit the Bribery and Corruption Office and make specific charges against individuals. From the UNP, only Ranjan Ramanayake seems to be active with his one man crusade against Rajapaksa corruption. Understandably for them all their efforts seem to have been in vain. With no arrests made, the accused men seem to have started to even mock their accusers. For instance, former Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage who, though his passport has been impounded, is still free to enjoy the broad acres of the land, poured scorn and ridicule on those making accusations and called the whole exercise a farce. If it’s of any consolation to the JVP accusers, it must be that the crab dances gaily in the cooking pan only until the water turns to boil.

But now it seems that enough is enough. The people’s patience has come to an end. So have the political accusers come to the end of their tether. The demand for arrests is growing louder and the Government is being called upon to make good their promise.

On Tuesday, JVP leader Anura Dissanayake threatened that, if no arrests had been made within two or three weeks, he would lay the blame at the feet of the President and the Prime Minister. “Everyone was waiting for the corrupt to be punished. People call and ask us when, even one or two corrupt politicians will be sent to prison,” a furious and frustrated Dissanayake declared.

Not to be outdone, Minister Champika Ranawaka, a key figure in the new Maithri Government, vowed on Wednesday to publish a blacklist exposing all those who have allegedly amassed billions of rupees during the Mahinda years. “I have credible information about their bank accounts, the amount of filthy lucre and their sources. I expect to expose all of them with their names shortly,” the minister said. He added that his dossier would contain the necessary hard evidence so that taking legal action against them would not be a difficult task. Ranawaka’s message was clear: No more excuses.

Perhaps it is time the Government also looked at another way to untie the Gordian Knot of corruption and ensure the guilty are brought to justice and jailed. How about trying out the American Method? In the 1920s Al Capone was the biggest gangster in America. He was into bootlegging, into bank robberies and was also accused of murder, responsible for the deaths of over a 100 in bomb blasts and also for ordering America’s Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. Although his involvement was well known, there was one problem. There was no evidence to convict him in a court for any of the offenses, since witnesses to his crimes refused to give evidence out of fear for their lives.

Ultimately the US government nailed him and his brother on an insignificant tax evasion charge. Al Capone was convicted and was jailed for 11 years. Uncle Sam got his man behind bars and showed the world there was more than one way to catch a rat or bell a cat.

Early morn jog maybe hazardous to the Nation’s health, Mr. President SUNDAY PUNCH 2 How refreshing to discover that President Maithripala Sirisena is a down to earth, modern day man of the people and not a self-proclaimed monarch descendent from an ancient age when the divine right of kings to rule was all the rage. One who shuns ostentatious high living. Not one who believes in living beyond the nation’s meager means. Man of the people: Is President Maithripala's daily workout in public exposing the nation's well being to hidden dangers? In an interview with Rupavahini aired on January 31, he declared that his presidential style would be marked with the stoic touch, with frugal living as his cornerstone; and that the past reckless squander of the people’s wealth in multimillion rupee tamashas held solely to aggrandise one man and his dynasty would henceforth cease. Instead, every rupee spent will be spent to further the people’s welfare. As one of his first steps in this direction, he cancelled the presidential plane akin to the American Air Force One, his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa, no doubt, in a flight of supreme confidence he would win the presidential election, had ordered for over Rs 2 billion of the tax payers’ money. Instead Sirisena directed that the money be spent on purchasing much needed spare parts for the present SriLankan Airlines fleet. Furthermore, to drive home his determination to lead by example, he promised that his wife and children would not be allowed to use the Sri Lankan Air force helicopters unless they travelled with him and that he himself would only use helicopters if it was absolutely necessary, a far cry from days not long ago when the Lankan Air Force was in danger of becoming the First Family Rajapaksa’s presidential toy. The cream on his home baked humble cake was his announcement that, in keeping with his policy, he should not be addressed as His Excellency and that there was no need to refer to his wife as First Lady. A simple Mrs. Sirisena would do nicely and just as well. The ‘uthumanani’ and ‘aariyawe’ tags were effectively dumped in the dustbin of history. Last week the newspapers published a heartwarming picture of the President at Independence Square posing with a bridal couple he had met by chance whilst jogging on the grounds, who had come to the historic site to have their photographs taken. They added another snapshot of history to their wedding album when they saw the president jogging and requested him to join them in saying cheese to the camera. The people’s president happily obliged. Jogging at the Square is a habit the President picked up when he was the Minister of Health in the former regime. As the photograph clearly showed, he still continues to indulge in the old habit. Even enjoying his daily exercise fix in public. But is it wise? Maithripala’s turbulent rise to the presidency saw the end of a regime ridden with corruption, rife with drugs and rotten at the core. No doubt, his crackdown on corruption and his sworn pledge to bring the evil perpetrators to justice have earned for him powerful enemies with the resources to see the end of him. They may have burrowed deep into their warrens now to escape the heat, but, make no mistake; they would be plotting and planning in the unholy dark to strike when the time was opportune, when the occasion presented itself. What better way to end the demon hunt than by eliminating the protagonist of change from the picture and thus leave the vista free for them to stride again in the ensuing chaos. Maithripala Sirisena has been a beacon light for Lanka, a shining star of hope. As much as the nation admires and appreciates the new president’s modesty and his common touch, the security of the state demands that he be well protected and safeguarded at all possible times. Too much is at stake to risk the President’s wellbeing. But, in accordance with his policy of good governance, is he stretching the need for transparency in all aspects and activities of government to cover himself, too; and, in the process, needlessly exposing his mortal frame to possible and unnecessary danger? Is he placing the collective hopes of this nation for a new era of maithri to dawn and shine across the land, carelessly on the line by a reckless disregard to the security implications? By continuing to exercise daily his jogging habit in the Square, is he testing fate to the utmost by presenting himself as a sitting duck to a sniper’s bullet, to a spray of machine gunfire from a passing vehicle or even a bear hug from a bomb strapped fanatic on a suicide jog? At Independence Square on a daily basis, he is what is called a ‘soft target’. Even if he is adamant and refuses to kick his long formed habit to work out in public, his advisers and family should put down their feet and issue him with a hundred per cent government warning that, unless he stubs out his habit to exercise in public and, instead, finds some safe secluded suitable setting to puff and pant in private, Jogging Can Be Hazardous to The Nation’s Health.