Columns

It appears that the President of Sri Lanka likes vivid imagery. Not so long ago, he compared the members of his party to crabs dancing in a boiling pot of water. This prediction came uncannily true this week when some of these members discarded even the stipulated parliamentary dress and slept in running shorts on the floor of the House.

Reflecting calm good sense
The frolicking MPs cast themselves and the House into ridicule in protest over former President Mahinda Rajapaksa being summoned to the Bribery Commission. But did these worthies demonstrate even a semblance of similar enthusiasm when, for example, Sinhalese villagers died in unjustified shootings in Weliweriya, when Tamil mothers were physically abused by state agents or when the 18th Amendment was approved with its hideous subversion of the Rule of Law?

In the wake of these antics, President Maithripala Sirisena’s address to the nation on Thursday reflected calm good sense. Particularly pointed was his remembering that some slaves, after being freed by President of the United States Abraham Lincoln, could not cope with the unfamiliar taste of their new found freedom and yearned to be under the yoke of the slave master again rather than fend for themselves.

This was a pointed reference to SLFP parliamentarians gravitating towards the former President despite the indignities and humiliation that they had suffered under Rajapaksa-rule.

United opposition against a monstrosity
The self-deprecation with which the President spoke contrasted abruptly with the bluster associated with the previous regime which still prevails after a brief shocked hiatus consequent to being ignominiously displaced in January 2015.

Witness therefore the ruffians outside Parliament and the Bribery Commission waving the Lion Flag minus the coloured stripes that represents Sri Lanka’s minorities. And irony of ironies, we saw a Rajapaksa brother, the former Defence Secretary loudly complaining of injustice even as the defence apparatus that he once ran excelled in the arbitrary targeting of dissenters. Indeed, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa himself, despite a weak admission that he had committed mistakes, appears not to have sufficiently learnt the lessons that the electorate taught him a few months ago.

This is, in effect, the monster raising its head again. Right thinking Sri Lankans should therefore stand collectively in opposition.

No sanctity attaches to a former President
What precisely is the harassment, pray, regarding the former President being summoned to the offices of the Bribery and Corruption Commission to record a statement? To allege that a head of State had committed an illegal act by the offer of a ministerial portfolio to the opposition’s former General Secretary during the election campaign, (buttressed we hope, by material showing that money changed hands), is an imaginative but not wholly impossible use of broad definitions of bribery and corruption in the parent law and the Presidential Elections Act.

That said, this allegation is somewhat frivolous compared to other charges of gross corruption leveled against the former President and his family. But these matters are extraneous to the point which is simply that no legal sanctity attaches to a former President. Quite apart from the popularly termed Waters Edge case (2008) where former President Chandrika Kumaratunga was held responsible in regard to a corrupt transaction, this principle has long been upheld by Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court. In particular, a retired President who commits a ‘brazen abuse of power’ is liable before the law, (Senerath v Kumaratunga, 2005).

Notwithstanding such established precedents, this was a week where the law had little place. Thus, the Speakers’ solemn ruling that permission must be required before MPs are questioned was perfectly proper yet quite irrelevant to the questioning of a former President.

The Government’s contradictory actions
But to condemn Sri Lanka’s racist and corrupt lunatic fringe does not however, mean that the United National Party Government must be given a proverbial blank cheque to do what it wants. This mistake was committed once with the Rajapaksas. It must not be committed ever again. It is unfortunate therefore that good governance fighters, media activists and leading voices from the Bar have been co-opted into the establishment machinery. Regardless, this Government must be sharply critiqued on worryingly incoherent draft legislation as well as its lackluster performance on campaign promises.

So, as much as the thirsty pleading for water is rewarded with just one drop, former Minster Basil Rajapaksa was arrested at the eleventh hour, just before the 100 day programme lapsed. The distasteful Central Bank bond scam with a committee of government lawyers apparently whitewashing the Governor is another example.

And the mishmash with the 19th Amendment continues. On Monday, it was discovered that, following the Supreme Court ruling, additional clauses had been smuggled into the amendment. One such addition subjects any private broadcasting or telecasting operator or any proprietor or publisher of a newspaper to a fine and a maximum of three years imprisonment upon indictment before the High Court, if the guidelines issued by the Elections Commission are infringed without reasonable cause.

This had been inserted into the 19th Amendment draft consequent to the Determination of the Supreme Court. As such, it has not been subjected to judicial review assessing its constitutionality and amounts to a surreptitious insertion invoking public concern. For a Government purportedly committed to media freedom, imposing penal consequences on the private media in such circumstances is certainly bizarre.

The paradox that Sri Lanka faces
In sum, an unenviable paradox faces Sri Lanka after a decade of degenerative authoritarianism. On the eve of a crucial vote on the 19th Amendment, numerous appeals have been issued to President Sirisena urging the use of executive power to bring both his rumbustious party and unruly elements of the Government to order.

So in the same breath as crying for the abolition of the executive presidency, we also demand swift presidential intervention to correct a chaotic political process. Despite this pressure, the President’s determination to refrain from excessive use of the executive powers vested in his Office is clear.
Even with all the tumult ringing noisily in our ears, one cannot but admire the restraint thus displayed.