Editorial

President Maithripala Sirisena has had enough of the Police Department, so he said at this week’s Cabinet meeting, though what made him come to that conclusion is not clear. What we know is that he wants heads to roll; from the topmost officer – the Inspector General of Police to unspecified lower rankers.

It was not too long ago that the President wanted, and got the Minister in charge of the Police replaced. If one is to hazard a guess, it has something to do with his recent public pronouncement that there was a plot to assassinate him and the former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a prospective Presidential candidate of the future.

The IGP himself has made an unusual remark that he too has information on that matter and wished his subordinates at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) to question him to find out what he knows. That is some procedure he mentions, and clearly at variance with normal Police investigation methods. Why must the IGP wait for his subordinates to come to him without voluntarily divulging the information he says he has?

The IGP must not then be familiar with the provisions of the Police Ordinance in that case. Section 56 refers to the Duties and Liabilities of a Police officer; any police constable quite apart from the IGP must surely know this by heart. S. 56 says; “It shall be his duty to collect and communicate intelligence” and “use his best endeavours and ability to prevent all crimes, offences …” and so on. The IGP is concealing evidence by not providing the information he has. No wonder some old-timers are saying the once proud service has gone to the pits and others are talking of the days when certain elements of the top brass of the Police were involved in the infamous failed coup of 1962, asking if history is repeating itself.

The CID is already under a cloud over what appears to be a ham-handed, botched attempt at trying to eke out evidence that would compromise the Prime Minister among others in the Central Bank bond scam probe. Problems with the Police have been endless. The deterioration process began quite some years ago and its image has been on a downward spiral.

With the rapid expansion of the Department in recent times, partly due to the twin insurgencies in the country, the decline of its image has been conversely in the opposite direction. It was inevitable that discipline would give way. That it got entangled in political meddling at every level was the blow that felled it to the canvas floor. From the President to the local MP, telephone calls put paid to the impartiality and efficiency of the Force. It became the most corrupt public institution in the country, and to be ranked with that dubious honour in a country where corruption is endemic, is no mean doing.

The President cannot just say the Police need a good shake-up. The investigations into the corrupt activities of the past Government are a textbook case of what has happened to the Police. It has become an appendage of the ruling party or parties. Citizens naturally ask what has happened to the investigations on a former Monitoring MP (as they were called). Allegations about his deeds, or misdeeds, were supposedly widespread but all of a sudden everything seems hushed up. If he is innocent of what he was alleged to have committed, the Attorney General must enter a nolle prosequi and discharge the accused from all charges. Not keep the public in animated suspension and suspicion.

What about the ‘pump and dump’ cases of the Colombo Stock Exchange of yesteryear? What about those indulging in money laundering that is seeing blue chip companies being swallowed up and real estate in residential Colombo falling like ninepins into their hands.

From the Police side, there is a justifiable grouse that the criminalisation of politics and the close nexus between many politicians and the underworld have made investigating crime a futility. The President cannot simply blame the Police for all these sins that are kept under the lid. These are cases involving political patronage at the highest levels of Government – past and present.

The 17th Amendment to the Constitution set up the Police Commission in a bid to stem the decline and politicisation of the Police over a decade ago. It was meant to give back the spine the Police lost over the years. But like the Bribery and Corruption Commission also set up under 17A, the politicians clawed back their powers and got the better of the situation. It reduced what were to be Independent Commissions to almost rubber stamps of Government as they succumbed to the sheer weight of political pressure that pervades the national life of this country.

Tsunami can hit twice

Last week’s earthquake-triggered tsunami that ravaged the Indonesian city of Palu should be treated as a wake-up call to the Sri Lankan authorities and the people that a disaster of such magnitude can come upon them – ‘like a thief at night’.

Indonesia is on that dangerous faultline of active tectonics and Sri Lanka is not that far away. The confluence of geophysical conditions that gave rise to last week’s tsunami cost more than 1,500 lives (with the death toll still rising) and wiped out a whole beachfront city.

After the devastating 2004 tsunami that hit Sri Lanka and many countries in the region, the UN set up an Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System. Warnings are sent to National Tsunami Warning Centres that act as a focal point in case of an emergency in countries of the Indian Ocean rim. But the system failed to alert the people of Palu last week.

This time Sri Lanka was not treated as a threatened country. Only a month ago (Sep. 5), 28 countries including Sri Lanka had taken part in the annual international tsunami drill. However, that drill seems to have had little publicity.

There is a danger in the proverbial “wolf, wolf” children’s story, but a national drill must be taken seriously when the cost, both in human lives and property is so terrible if and when the real ‘wolf’, a tsunami, does hit like it did on that fateful day of December 26, 2004.

Three more drills along the coastline are to be completed before December 31 and it is hoped that they will be taken with utmost seriousness. The ‘no build zones’ within 200 metres of the coastline has been now modified and increased to 300 metres in general but in Unawatuna it could be 10 metres and Uswetakeiyawa 30 metres, but permission from the Coast Conservation Authority can be obtained. This discretionary power needs to be de-politicised and carefully enforced.

When the 2004 tsunami hit, many said the next tsunami would take another century to happen. Last week’s tsunami in Indonesia does not seem to corroborate that theory.