Columns

Social media is to blame. It is they who fire all the verbal cannon balls at the government, we are told. It targets the uniformed kind who has replaced the suit and tie wearing gentlemen that sat behind those plush desks and wrote learned missives that many of the political bigwigs did not understand.

No wonder the country is heading down a slippery slope, the technically and professionally equipped critics of those who run the country say to discredit the so-called new ‘development’ wallahs, today’s plotters and planners.

Now that is truly unfair. To read some — thankfully not all one must say — of the social media one would think that nothing happens in this Resplendent Isle except for the bad. It is surprising that the UN’s Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet, currently under fire herself from this side of the battlements, had not returned fire at the Rajapaksa government for depriving its people of essential culinary sustenance like turmeric and tamarind that makes their curries now as dull as their politicians.

Government defenders say this shows that social media and other civil society organisations that feed lop- sided UN agencies are to blame for providing ballast to these neo-imperialist pro-western capitalist entities to condemn economically-deprived developing countries as not only discouraging but of stealing their own assets.

Falling back on ideological phraseology that went into disuse with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991, some of our more recent additions to the political poison are reviving archaic political phrases to show their even more ill-read opponents that they know a thing or two about international affairs by pulling the last phrase or two out of Old Mother Hubbard’s almost depleted cupboard.

One vicious pandemic is bad enough for Sri Lanka to battle through. Imagine being fathered with another Donald Trump who has followers in government circles.

So imagine my shock one morning when turning over the pages of a Sri Lankan newspaper. If I was Japanese I would call it shokku. It may not mean the same thing I felt but seemed the closest to shock.

But there it was on the front page glaring at the reader out of the headlines. “Electricity for all”, it read, as though it was to be liberally dished and given free. Shocked by what appeared to be unprecedented generosity I read on to see who the benefactor was for this largesse is to be. The rest of the headline read: “Rambukwella urges officials, politicians not to slap roadblocks.”

Minister Rambukwella as Media Minister must have got the information before others and announced it at a meeting of the Tumpane Pradeshiya Sabha in Galagedara. Mr Rambukwella, as an old Thomian would surely keep his promise if the Rajapaksa government would back the electricity providers who are not in the best of shape these days, if you get what I mean.

The minister apparently promised every Sri Lankan household will have electricity come next Sinhala and Tamil New Year, meaning one supposes 2022.  The government hoped that the relevant public sector officials would do their best to supply power connections to every house in the Galagedara Pradeshiya Sabha Division without any delay, the Minister said.

It was not reported whether the gathered residents of Galagedara applauded until their palms hurt. They are hardly likely to have carried Minister Rambukwella shoulder high and into a palanquin, given the health restrictions imposed for the pandemic.

But the ever tolerant citizens of Sri Lanka will have to wait more than another year until the light shines in their houses and the promise of Minister Rambukwella turns into reality.

Much sooner than all that Minister Nivard Cabraal expects the first quarter growth in 2021 to be 3.5% and that does not come from social media but government statistics if state figures are to be accepted and as reliable as ex-President Trump’s tax returns.

If one might adapt slightly the words of Willie Shakespeare “there are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than is dreamt of in your philosophy.” If the good citizens of Sri Lanka benefit from the political promises that are made all well and good and may Sri Lanka prosper as it should.

But there is much more that society expects from their governments not just cutting forests and draining wetlands, stealing timber and clearing state lands to construct roads to their private lands.

In recent times much public attention has been focused on law and order, in fact the whole gamut of the rule of law, the judiciary, the updating of the law and the conduct of the police.

People detained by the police sometimes end up dying in police cells. People are being assaulted in police stations. Just the other day a young law student was allegedly assaulted when he went to meet a detainee at the Peliyagoda Police Station and suffered injuries.

Now a police chief inspector and four police officers have been suspended and an inquiry instituted on the orders of Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekera.

All that is very good and the minister must be thanked for it. But the question is whether it would have happened if the victim had not been the son of a former Provincial Governor and a prominent person Maithri Gunaratne, a writer.

Had there not been a public outcry and widespread media coverage would authorities have acted as expeditiously — well okay — as they did? But that is not what should be expected from the authorities in charge of and dispensing law and order.

Every citizen should be entitled to the rights they have a right to under the constitution not beg for them. Some time back, we heard of the person being kicked to death once again in a police station.

About two weeks ago, we read an article by Dr Nihal Jayawickrama, an internationally-known jurist, legal academic and the Coordinator of the UN Sponsored Judicial Integrity Group who initially drafted the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Integrity on judicial conduct.

This was a much needed international effort to codify the conduct of judges and judicial officials because of the need to clean up corruption in the Judiciaries in many parts of the world. Sri Lanka is not free of judicial corruption as a book published by the prestigious Marga Institute established after surveys, discussions and research.

What comes as a stunning surprise is that the Sri Lanka Judiciary does not have a code of conduct for judges. Whereas most other professional bodies such as those of doctors, lawyers, engineers and journalists have a professional code of conduct to govern their ethical behavior the judiciary is without one. Why?

Does it seem fair and just that those who belong to a body that dispenses justice and orders others to follow the law should not have a set of rules to direct its own conduct? Could that be justified when the UN in passing a resolution endorsing the Bangalore Principles also urged Member States to urge their own judiciaries to incorporate those principles into their own codes of conduct ?

That is not all. For some years now, legal and other bodies concerned with codifying a law of contempt has been trying to push through a draft law. Some drafts have been done but because of lack of space it must await another time to discuss.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before moving to London where he worked for Gemini News Service. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)