Sunday Times 2
Has the President to go it alone?
View(s):
Whether the President has to go it alone is the question posed today to the public through the media. This question arose in the context of the Sena caterpillar menace, wild elephants, and such other problems faced by farmers in the Anuradhapura District, after the President visited Anuradhapura, alone, to look into these problems.
On an earlier occasion the President similarly visited the office of the Registrar of Motor Vehicles, also alone, to find out how things are happening
In recent newspaper articles, Prof N. A. de S. Ameratunge asks: Must the President have to do all that alone?
These lapses have a chain effect on law and order which fall in the hands of Ministers Ali Sabry and Sarath Weerasekera. As discussed in earlier articles, the attention given law and order was more of a problematic nature than needs to be given for its advancement and improvement. The big question that is asked is: Has the President then got to go it alone?
Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekera is the focal person. How Minister Weerasekera expects to revamp the police as heralded by him in a declaration is yet to be seen. How Minister Weerasekera would then advise the President is again barely clear. And just later, January 7, 2021, Minister Weerasekera promises to stand by police officers who do their duty. Can this be yet another mere utterance which may not lead to concrete steps being taken to revamp the police.
Be that as it may, law and order is a serious problem today. Details are well known. Law and order problems are through violent crime, underworld activity, drug peddling, security, religious strife and various disputes. Where then does Minister Weerasekera come into the picture? What is the revamp of the police he is talking of, and how does he hope to stand by the honest policeman? None of these is spelt out. Are these too mere dumb and inane utterances on the part of the Minister?
If he can only metamorphose from the myopic, regimented and conceited views, Minister Weerasekera can offer the following advice to the President. The crux of much of the problem is crime intelligence. Crime intelligence, rather the failure of it, runs through all the policing. This is the critical issue evident on the crime scene for well over a decade or more — failure of crime intelligence for anticipation, and preparedness for counter action.
The concept of community policing: ‘The police are the people and the people are the police’ is the age-old tried-and-tested method of collecting crime intelligence. For unknown reasons the priority given to intelligence gathering by the rank and file of the Police Service has died down. Instead, now, hi-tech surveillance has come into vogue. Cost-free intelligence gathering has been replaced with high cost surveillance cameras. Commissions, needless to say, are proportionate to the costs! Their purpose too has come into question. Intrusion into people’s privacy seems to have taken precedence over crime intelligence.
Investigation after the crime has helped somewhat; investigation helped where intelligence was totally absent in the matter of the Easter bombings. But of how much use is the crime intelligence gathered in crime investigation by Police after the crime is committed?
These cases are followed up later in the hands of the AG and the Courts, and even of the Prisons at the end of the judicial process. The problems of laws delay, of the malfunctioning of the court process are legion.
Intelligence gathered during investigations then get no follow up. Can Justice Minister Sabry contend with these to frame his advice? Can he hope to advise the President on law and order in this respect in the name of Justice, a process within his purview? There is unfortunately no media or other expert coverage on this.
The issue of law and order equally engages Justice Minister Sabry, Public Security Minister Weerasekera, their Ministries and officials, all together. The need, therefore, is their coordination. The idea of separation of powers, however, keeps them apart, since that separation is profitable and remunerative to professionals in the law process for justice. Coordination, instead, would block filthy lucre.
Like in other spheres, the President will rely on the Army. But here too he will run into a problem. The Rathupaswala syndrome may reflect the difficulty. The problem may, perhaps, be congenital. The President so left alone would yet fall back on the military. But the military will be less helpful. For the military inevitably think on different lines. They do not converge with the thinking of others.
This then is an age-old problem. Socratic thinking grappled with this problem from centuries ago. “Each of us is naturally not quite like anyone else, but rather differs in nature; different men are apt for the accomplishment of different jobs… Who would do a finer, one man practising many arts, or one man one art? …One man, one art.” Plato Republic Book ii p 370 b. These thoughts of old may help the media and the experts, even today, to grapple with this problem.
Such intelligence and insight, as Prof Ameratunge in his capacity can contribute, will surely help. Can a dentist act like a surgeon? Can the Army deal with the Sena Caterpillar/Fall Armyworm, or animal husbandry? There are of course other due experts. Trust they too will assist the media to clear the confusion.
General Eisenhower, supreme commander of the allied forces that won WW 2, and was the 34th President of the U.S.A. (1952-1961) was not left alone. A wide array attended on him. He did not want to be left alone because he knew the value of the varied experts around him from far and wide and he had the capacity to deal with the expertise of them all. He did not appoint only one class of hurrah-boys just to boost his ego and pander to him. And when he left office, America was the strongest, most influential, and most productive nation in the world. This reference is useful to summarise in few words, all that is said above.
(The writer is a Retired Senior Superintendent of Police. He can be contacted at seneviratnetz@gmail.com; T.P. 077 44 751 44)