Sunday Times 2
A deadly virus: Governance by Presidential Commissions
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A virus taking the form of Governance by Presidential Commissions of Inquiry, now growing in a virulent form, has replaced Government by Constitution. The virus was coming. Now it has come. Law and order, as could be expected, is infected with this virus.
The problem is that of incoherence between the two, that of Government by Constitution and of Governance by Commissions. The two act differently, the latter sometimes outstripping the regular. Each claiming to stand high as two high-legged stools, each vying with the other as equally important. Law and order has fallen between these two high-legged stools and is yet struggling to find the law and the order within it. The labour and the exertion in the effort of restoration of Law and order, from what it was not so long ago under Government by Constitution is now a great strain with Governance by Commissions. The germ in Governance by Commissions has been surely coming, and the ailment in current Law and order is the net result. The result, today, is that law and Order is a growing concern for Government by Constitution, and so for the people and for their regular procedure. The reasons bear some examination.
The most recent of Governance by Commissions is illustrative. This Commission in its report is a striking example of Interference with the Judiciary. In this instance the Commission has attempted an intrusion and intervention into the judicial process. This is in a case tried and sentence passed by the High Court and affirmed by the Supreme Court. This imposition has cast aspersions on the Judiciary, an exertion covered with a face mask of Governance by Commission. The details of this case are well known and need no repetition here. Law and Order stands thereby high and dry.
In the course of this exposure , much adverse comment, much vituperation and much abuse on the character on the commissioners compiling the report, has grown in a manner unheard of ever before. It seems clear that such character is the very reason for their selection, knowing how ‘they stoop to conquer’. This is singularly unfortunate. There is little law and order then to expect from the likes of these. Regretfully though, the observation is that the likes of these should be kept furthest away from the sacred duty of law and order.
As with the personnel appointed so is the criminal administration which presented the case through a Governance by the Commission. Apart from many other faulty procedures engaged by this commission, a fact on report is that some of whom the Commission found fault with were just public officers on their assigned duty, against whom there was yet no charge and from whom no explanation was even called for. It is only Governance by Commissions which would admit such serious misgivings in their process as in this instance, but never from Government by Constitution. These doubts and uncertainties of process cannot augur well for the people.
Much of this dysfunction is possible when there is a mutant through the virus, Governance by Commissions. Such distortion of concepts as political accountability with criminal liability, is possible only through Governance by Commissions.
The Attorney General could have avoided the confusion as concerns his office. The recent commission has perhaps further interrupted the task of the AG. The purpose of the commission may, therefore, have been otherwise than seeking clarity of issues. The AG could have sorted out the non-living proteins from the living organisms in the bacteria or the virus, to use the terms of current currency in order that the worm within the Governance by Commissions could have been extricated. That itself is now a difficult task foisted on the AG, in this instance.
For, on the other hand, however, such experiences of mistrust through instituted means of Governance by Commissions have been for some time legion. Moreover, these have been a recurring problem for law and order over the recent years. Over a long time since Independence, a commission was appointed only for a limited specific purpose. There was then no idea of Governance by Commissions, only instituted inquiries strictly within the framework of the Constitution, to be termed Government by Constitution. Plainly, this feature underscored that Government by Constitution was then and for long, sufficient. The point then is that within the recent years, there was a failure of viable Government by and within the Constitution itself. The emergent trend of Governance by Commissions was but a ploy adopted in the wake of malfunction of the regular constitutional process. The breakdown for law and order persists.
This trick through Governance by Commissions was played in the evolving uncertainties and contrived failure of Governance by Constitution. Various means were therefore deployed, including interference with the Judiciary. Government by Constitution through the due function of the Judiciary, the Executive and the Legislature was thus substituted by Governance by Commissions. Of late, the process has been a creeping expropriation of the vitality of Government by Constitution, the given order. The dubious practice now goes on. As a result, the virus of Governance by Commissions has now assumed a recurring cyclical trend. The frequent Governance by Commissions has now become chronic. Thus, they developed their own mutants and new strains of the malady, in political accountability intermixed with criminal liability, a transmutation that is handmade, in the laboratory, and does not come from the bats on the trees, or from the snake in the grass.
Law and order can, however, draws some hope from the United States incidents of breakdown of law and order on January 6. Through all that melee on Capitol Hill, law and order stood its ground only because Government by Constitution stood firm; the two Houses of the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Executive with its law enforcement machinery, and of the media in support, together they contributed to law and order. Governance by Commissions, in the way of Sri Lanka, did not dismantle the constitutional order in the US. Law and Order prevailed. That example also shows that law and order is but a function of a number of authorities working in coherence.
Law and order would surely prevail with the confidence in the regular system. That is the lesson from the US. Law and order would prevail due to public confidence in the given system. In the US, Government by Constitution stood firm in the face of imminent breakdown of law and order. Resilience still remains there, well beyond January 6, with strictness and continuing severity. Does this ring a bell with us in this country? The plea is for concerted contribution of related authorities to the task of law and order in this country.
While the people are straining to cope with the virus, and with all the high and mighty laid low, just one man stands high in his own imagination that he is a colossus among the rest. He reminds of Percy Bysshe Shelly’s immortal poem: “Ozymandias.” Excerpts are reproduced to illustrate my comparison:
“… Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read.
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!….”
If I may guide young English readers a bit, let me just explain in context, that the words, “with its frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” signify empire building rulers of the tyrannical kind that was much despised.
(The writer is a Retired Senior Superintendent of Police. He can be contacted at seneviratnetz@gmail.com .TP 077 44 751 44 )