Columns

Pass the wet hanky, folks. These are not the best of times for the Rajapaksa Family after having lived it up for a decade or more in the best of all possible worlds that undiluted power created and total ignorance of the decadent other side of the mid day moon that had once shone on them, led them to gulp the bewitching ‘vadakaha sudiya’ to the full in the belief the good times would last forever.

If last year was bad enough with the bottom falling out on their pedestalled lifestyle and the seemingly never ending game of Happy Families brought to an abrupt halt when someone pulled out a Joker from the pack of Knaves, the dawning rays of a new born new year sun last month have only served to cast grimmer shadows in its wake and to portend only worst could follow the bad for a clan that claimed royal status and proudly wore the purple as if by divine right.

But since May last year, there has been no let up in the Rajapaksas main occupation to stride up the steps of the BMICH and there, in nondescript offices of that distinct and opulent edifice, face the harsh strains of the Yahapalana inquisition.

THEN: Relaxing on holiday, Yoshitha riding the waves on speedboat

For the former president Mahinda Rajapaksa it was a case of making comeback after comeback to make statement after statement and be stir-fried in the conditioned cool of the building. His wife Shiranthi was sautéed often; his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa was grilled over and over again until over done, while brother Basil Rajapaksa was roasted alive and even had to spend some months in Welikade’s sanatorium for the rich and famous. So were sons Namal and Yoshitha summoned to be tossed into boiling pans to be stewed.

If that was the Rajapaksas main vocation these last eight months, it was also the nation’s main entertainment. But repeated enactments of the same scene of the Rajapaksas entering the building and then leaving it with a snide ‘voice cut’ to the gathered media, without the high drama of an arrest or two, even once to raise the fever, had lowered the long-running soap opera to a farce and damned the ratings to an all time dreary low that even the purple satakayas they flaunted as their special badge of royalty was in danger, like the proverbial daily viewed rooster’s red cockles, of turning a pallid white.

The Government’s invited Guests of Honour – the Lankan public – still waited to be served the promised meal but, though appetising culinary smells wafted regularly through the kitchen’s swinging doors, the much vaunted dish of the day was not wheeled to the table.

Thus last Saturday morning when the news was ritually announced that the former President’s second son, the 28-year-old former Lieutenant of the Sri Lankan Navy Yoshitha Rajapaksa was being questioned by the FCID, no one considered it was something to write home about. The only titbit that sparked enough interest to raise even half an eyebrow or rouse an ounce of gastronomic juice was the ingredient that the interrogation was being held at the Navy Headquarters and not at the BMICH office of the detectives.

But what set the house on fire was the news that broke around 4 in the afternoon that Yoshitha Rajapaksa had been arrested along with four others and had been remanded by the Kaduwela Magistrate for two weeks. Suddenly pseudo royalty’s blue battleship token had landed on the ‘Go to Jail’ sign on the monopoly board.

But if the son Yoshitha had been unfortunate to land in remand, the father Mahinda was searching for the ‘Get out of jail free’ card he thought he had tucked up in his repertoire of political gimmicks. The first was to launch a tear jerking campaign to decry the remanding of an ‘innocent small child’ to wreak political vengeance from the father and to ask the nation: “Is this Yahapalanaya?”

Speaking to the media, Mahinda Rajapaksa said it is wrong to take revenge out of children. “If they had caught me for these things and jailed me, it would have been okay. But they have taken revenge from my son who is innocent. There is a doctor also there. He is a shareholder. He had been told to say Yoshitha’s name and that then they will put him out. If not they will jail him. Now he is preparing to sit for an exam. On the 9th or 10th is his MD. Now imagine the mental anxiety he has. Merely because he was a director and a shareholder action is taken against him. Keep my child aside. Let’s talk about that child. It’s a grave injustice.”

The former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa joined in to express his condemnation of the arrest. He said, “When the war started there was no one coming forward to join the forces. I went to the President and told him that if he could give a son to the forces, it will be great strength for others to join. Shiranthi also agreed and it was after that that Yoshitha came forward to join the navy. I think that taking such a child into custody is not something that people of this country having children of their own will endorse. ”

“This, I think,” Gotabaya Rajapaksa continued, “is the first time in our history that political revenge has been taken from a small child. Those who came in the name of Yahapalanaya have now gone beyond Hitler. Even Hitler did not do these things. In the name of Yahapalanaya what has been brought is a dictatorship. There is no law in the country.” Yes, it is true what they say, isn’t it? In the eyes of doting dads or fond uncles, children never grow up to adulthood but remain perpetually evergreen as the small boys they once were. Like Peter Pan in Neverland.

NOW: Giving the thumbs up from the police Black Maria, Yoshitha being taken from court to Welikada prison

But while ‘little’ Yoshitha’s arrest will have brought terrible grief to the Rajapaksa family and whilst the nation will and must sympathise with their distress at this trying hour on a personal level, it cannot suffer the luxury — as the family can — of being swamped by it and give short shrift to the fundamental principle that lies at the base of any credible legal system: that all — from the president’s son to the beggared orphan — are equal before the law.

The decision to arrest Yoshitha Rajapaksa and four other directors of Carlton Sports Network (CSN) seems to have been taken after a painstaking investigation had been conducted into the affairs of the company especially as to the source of funding. According to the Police Spokesman, the offices of the CSN were raided last November under a court order. Several documents, computer hard disk drives and desktop computers were confiscated by the FCID and taken for further investigations. The spokesman also said there was evidence to suggest that the former President’s second son functioned as the Chairman and the main decision maker of the CSN channel. This was established after examining e-mails exchanged among members of the senior management of the company, the spokesman claimed.

The charges on which they were arrested and produced in court by the police and remanded by the magistrate for two weeks are serious. The offenses include money laundering to the tune of Rs. 365 million under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, an Act brought by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa himself.

Though Mahinda Rajapaksa now says the Act was enacted to prevent fundraising activities by terrorist organisations and does not apply to activities of companies such as CSN and that he does not ‘see any relevance of the Money Laundering Act with these arrests’ it is nevertheless clear that unaccounted foreign funding used for any purpose in Lanka gives rise to a prima facie presumption that it could be from the proceeds of unlawful activities. Furthermore, whatever may have been the intentions of the then President Rajapaksa, the provisions of the Money Laundering Act barely refers to terrorist funding at all but concentrates in the main to funding obtained from any unlawful activity.

To put it briefly Section 3 (1) states that any person who engages directly or indirectly in any transaction in relation to any property which is derived or realised directly or indirectly, from any unlawful activity or proceeds from any unlawful activity, he shall be guilty of the offense of money laundering for which the punishment is a fine and/or imprisonment of five years to twenty years.

The punishment will be the same for any person who attempts or conspires to commit money laundering or aids or abets in its commission. Under the Act any property will be deemed to have been acquired directly or indirectly by a person from unlawful activity if he cannot show that it had been acquired from his known income and receipts. Thus it can be seen that the Money Laundering Act is a ‘cover all’ enactment and is not confined to proceeds from terrorism alone.

Such is the serious nature of the offense of money laundering — and that, too, to the tune of 365 million rupees to fund a media institution — for which Yoshitha Rajapaksa has been charged along with the other serious offenses of criminal breach of trust, forgery and undervaluing imported items obtained by Carlton Sports Network that it is unbecoming of the former president to be going round tearfully lamenting “They are trying to take revenge from my child under the Money Laundering Act which I brought only to deal with money raised from terrorism coming into the country. Instead of remanding him, remand me instead,” at almost every gathering he goes to where he is met by the press or at every meeting he participates attended by his tissue carrying teary eyed supporters.

But, alas, it does not happen like that. As it is in the Buddhist law of karma, so it is with crime. No one can take the rap for another’s alleged acts in the operation of the criminal law. The atonement of sin cannot be done through proxy, cannot be outsourced even to the same flesh and blood.

The delay on the police to investigate a crime or the procrastination of the Attorney General to recommend prosecution can be attributed to political favouritism even as political vendettas against political enemies can expedite police action and make an Attorney General rush to order prosecution.

But once the suspects have been arrested and produced before the magistrate, the decision whether or not to remand the suspects depends on whether a prima facie case has been shown to exist that requires answer. To question the magistrate’s decision whether to release, remand or grant immediate bail to the suspects, is to stray into the dangerous ground of contempt and to scandalise the court with innuendos that the judicial decision has been politically motivated.

Furthermore the former president also claimed this week that he helped save President Premadasa daughter Dulanjalie Premadasa from arrest a few years ago when she was allegedly nabbed with counterfeit currency. He said he did so because she was a former President’s daughter.

“I saved her from arrest because she happened to be the daughter of a former president Premadasa,” ex-president Rajapaksa said. According to him the same kind of deferential treatment should have been extended to him by the Government and therefore his son should not have been arrested because he, Mahinda Rajapaksa, had been the President of the country. Failure to demonstrate this respect and deference to a former president reveals, he implied, that the Government is conducting a political witch-hunt and taking revenge from his child.

This unwarranted reference to Dulanjalie Premadasa implying she was guilty of a criminal offence and only walks free today because of his magnanimity drew a spirited reply from her. She told Mahinda Rajapaksa, in no uncertain terms, exactly where to get off. In her letter published on 3rd February, she says, “You were our former Executive President, but yet you slander me without any basis, simply because your son has been arrested.

“You are well aware that I am innocent. You seem to think that you have a right to play around with my name when you have run out of excuses. This is unacceptable and dishonourable. If you are a credible lawyer you should know that I am not an accused and that this particular matter is an on-going court case and, as such, legally we cannot discuss it. Even you, now, must adhere to the law of our country.” she said.

“I did not need your supposed advice about leading an upright lifestyle because my parents carried out that duty brilliantly. You should advise your children as their parent about leading their lives in a manner which befits their position in society,” she said.

Though Mahinda Rajapaksa says he has learnt from his past follies that contributed to his defeat and will not commit it again should he return to power, this episode shows that he has learnt nought. One of the main issues that roused the indignation of the public and turned the tide of public opinion against him, was how selective law enforcement became the official Rajapaksa policy of law enforcement in the country during his regime.

Take, for instance, the infamous Tangalle murder case which occurred during the Rajapaksa years where a British citizen was shot dead and his Russian girlfriend was gang raped without the police making arrests for years even though the assailants led by the former chairman of Tangalle’s Pradeshiya Sabha were known to the police. It took a British Prime Minister attending the Colombo Commonwealth summit in 2013 to twist Mahinda’s presidential arm and spur the police to bring the killer and the rapists to justice. There has been another occasion when he has publicly stated that he saved a person from arrest because “he was one of us, and therefore I shaped it up”.

Now when he is out of power and when his son has been subjected to the due process and has been remanded for offenses allegedly committed, Mahinda Rajapaksa is demanding the same special sacred cow status for his family to guarantee the long arm of the law does not touch his son. “If someone has done anything wrong he should be arrested. As a father I must tell, even if my children had done anything wrong they have to be arrested but there should be a proper way of doing that,” What is the proper way other than to produce him in court and let the due process operate? After all, there was nothing extra judicial in the remanding of Yoshitha Rajapaksa.

It is the people’s aspiration to see that the law applies to all equally, regardless of their social, economic or political position. It is not a people’s death wish to live under a system of government in which their freedoms, their liberties and their rights to justice depend upon their kinship with the rulers. The law is supreme and the courts, its temple. It is a jealous god and can tolerate no idol worship to lesser earthly deities.