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Alice thought things were curious. Well some things even curiouser. But the case of Wimal Weerawansa MP, known to one and all as the “rathu sahodaraya” sounds far more curious than anything Alice would have encountered in Wonderland.
In fact it is so curious that it takes not only the banana but the kehel mala as well.

MP Weerawansa of fasting fame and his wife often as not, seem to run into problems with diplomatic passports

To those who are colour blind-partially or fully – confusion over colour is natural. To the ideologically colour blind our “rathu sahodaraya” appears as blood red or even carmine red, a true blue socialist, if one might mix ones metaphorical colours so to say, whose verbal pyrotechnics bordering on dangerous decibel levels are comparable to what was heard in Red Square or Tiananmen Square in the days of revolutionary ardour. Certainly in Hitler’s Berlin, Castro’s Cuba and Soerkarno’s Jakarta, if not exactly in Tiananmen.

MP Weerawansa of fasting fame and his wife often as not, seem to run into problems with diplomatic passports. There is of course no need to go into the antecedents of the Weerawansa duos dalliance with diplomatic passports. There appear to be files in government agencies that tell the story or stories of securing diplomatic passports.

In this instance the contretemps that took Weerawansa of the Red Brigade to the Negombo Court House instead of a direct flight to Rome where he was apparently headed when accosted by the uniformed kind and other types of law enforcers, seems somewhat confused judging by media reports.

That is what makes this case seem so interesting to the normal citizen who does not possess the powers of detection of the fictional Hercule Poirots located in the 4th Floor of Police Headquarters and sundry innocuous- looking buildings or the persuasive powers of a Sri Lankan cop armed with a baton and a suspect in the backroom of a police station.

If one might divert somewhat from the main narrative which is the Weerawansa travel plan, it is to state with hand on heart that any high pitched screams of “Buddhu ammo” emanating from the backrooms of offices of the law that might sound like a mutiny on the high “c” s is nothing more than a police conductor with a baton in hand training the local choir.

To return to Mr Weerawansa’s unfortunate brush with immigration and our criminal sleuths who after so many years are now appealing to the public for any information on Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder, it might be said without any fear of contradiction (as some are wont to say) that losing a passport is quite a common occurrence.

Certainly it was a common occurrence in the years I was with our embassy in Bangkok. At least twice or three times a week Sri Lankans, individually or with families turn up in our embassy at Soi 19 Sukhumvit having lost their passports or had them stolen.
Bangkok is notorious for its pickpockets especially in the down market areas of Pratunam and its environs. But of course it is not always the slick pickpockets who can slice your trouser belt without you knowing it who are responsible for the “lost” or ” stolen” passports. There are those who sell them, for there was a lucrative ‘market’ operated by an LTTE- Thai nexus involved in people smuggling.

Anyway the procedure is for the Immigration Department to be informed immediately of any reports of lost or stolen passports so that the passports could be invalidated if temporary documents are issued. But first the complainant has to produce a report from the Thai police that the loss of a passport had indeed been reported with the name of complainant recorded. This is a common practice anywhere.

Occasionally the pickpockets or somebody who found a passport discarded by the thieves or accidentally lost send it to the police or the embassy. Anyway if a temporary one-way travel document is issued for the person or persons to return to Sri Lanka the Immigration Department is aware of it as the embassy reports this back to Colombo.

There are lessons to be learnt here. First is that the loss or theft of a travel document must be immediately conveyed to our nearest diplomatic mission if it happens abroad or to the Immigration Department if it happens in Sri Lanka.A consequence of that is that the previous travel document is cancelled and invalidated for travel. If a new passport is sought, it is issued only after the cancellation of the previous document is ensured.

Parliamentarian Weerawansa has claimed that his original passport was stolen. He is reported to have said so in an interview to a Sinhala language newspaper. Some excerpts of that interview were reported in an English language website.
Now, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the original reported interview or the English-language translation. With that proviso let me quote the relevant paragraph from the translation.

“My diplomatic passport was stolen. Then I got a new one. While changing houses, I found the old diplomatic passport. I had thought that (diplomatic passport) was the new one and got the visa on that. This morning I got another passport.”
Life, as they say, is full of surprises. If what is said above is correct and Weerawansa has been accurately reported, then the person or persons who “stole” Weerawansa’s passport had suddenly transmorgrified into a compassionate one deposited the passport in Weerawansa’s household effects knowing that he was moving house. Not only did the thief have prior knowledge of Weerawansa’s house-moving plans he seems to have access to his household effects and knew exactly where to put the passport so he would find it well in time for him to obtain the necessary visas and not disrupt his travel plans.

Several questions arise. If I was from the CID (which I am not, heaven forbid) or whichever inquisitorial agency that got its hands of our rathu sahodaraya to try and disrupt the journey of this wise man into the heart of Europe which surely would have led to another age of enlightenment in that struggling continent, I would ask them the following questions. There are more I would ask as a journalist but let that pass.

When was the passport stolen? Was the theft reported to the police and Immigration? When was that done? When was the new passport issued? When was the ‘stolen’ passport found? How many days before the date of travel was it discovered? Was the Immigration Department informed that it was found among the household goods? If so what did the department advice since it has already issued a new passport automatically cancelling the other? When were the visas obtained? Now with two diplomatic passports in hand would it not have been prudent to ask a relevant official, if one was ignorant of the laws and rules prevailing? Was such advice sought and if not why?
The news paragraph quoted cites Weerawansa as saying that he obtained another passport “this morning”. So how many passports does he have?
These are the kind of questions an embassy would ask if somebody turned up at its door with a complaint of stolen or lost passports.
Unless, of course, this was some deep-seated plot by the West to embarrass MP Weerawansa who they feared would do a Hitler with his fiery oratory and turn Europe red.