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Fined for COVID party: Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg

When the Norwegian police clamped a 20,000 kroner fine on their prime minister for breaking the law, the country’s citizenry did not light fire crackers and beat raban. They went about their business as best as they could under numerous restrictions to contain a spreading pandemic.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s prime crime was that she decided to celebrate her birthday at a public restaurant with her family. Knowing full well that pandemic rules and regulations were in force –after all she introduced them — she should have kept her family gathering even smaller unlike in Sri Lanka where the power and influence of the host is determined by the numbers around him or her.

In Norway, the regulations stipulated a maximum 10 guests. She had 13 guests which proved unlucky for her — I mean the figure 13, not the guests. Three more than the permitted number! Imagine what a heinous crime for the prime minister of the country to commit.

If she had gone through a few lessons of Sri Lankan applied mathematics — smoothly applied all over with palm oil — Prime Minister Solberg’s guest list could have been easily cut down to size or doubled as we did with the Geneva vote.

Just the other day while looking for some coconut oil to fry an egg I was interrupted by something called “breaking news” — which was badly broken if you ask me, no not the news the English — saying the import of palm oil has been banned. Why, they did not say though unconfirmed sources had told the news channel that too many palms were calling for an oiling, what with the value of the rupee hurtling down the manhole to exit into the stratosphere.

What bothers me is what the Norwegian Police Commissioner Ole Saevcrud had said at a news conference after the police did the ‘dirty’ on the prime minister. But from the standpoint of the good citizens of this Scandinavian land the police had done their duty — catching those who break the law particularly at a time when the world is combating a scourge that is still to be controlled.

What is worse is that these rules and regulations were put together by the government of which Erna Solberg is prime minister. The principle is clear enough. There is a law. If you break it and is found to have broken it, you must pay for it whether you are prince or pauper.

That is the law and it must be observed. And it must be applied equally if impartiality is to be observed and everybody treated alike if the law and its enforcers are to be respected. Whatever one might say of the United Kingdom, its history as a colonial power and the manner in which it treated its colonies and the colonial people, there are certain standards that have been established in the modernising process.

Yes, it might be said Sri Lanka by whatever name it was called in the ancient past and centuries later, enjoyed a glorious hydraulic civilisation. But why is it that we keep harping about the past and Sri Lanka’s advanced civilisation of the time, implying surely that we have little to offer today’s generations or those to come if there is anything left to offer them.

Right now former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s conduct is to be scrutinised by an impartial official for lobbying current ministers on behalf of a finance company called Greensill which collapsed last month.

The former prime minister has been criticised for contacting ministers via text on behalf of the company. Downing Street has said the probe would be led by lawyer Nigel Boardman on behalf the Cabinet Office while the Labour opposition says the government’s response is “inadequate”.

Mr Cameron has said he has not broken any codes of conduct or lobbying rules. But in a statement last Sunday weeks after reports of his lobbying emerged, the former Tory leader said that he should have contacted ministers through “formal” channels.

What is important is that there are strict rules of conduct that ministers, MPs and civil servants are expected to observe. There are independent committees or officials who are already in place or will be appointed to examine breaches of those codes or any suspected violations of codes of conduct and rules that have been established by parliament.

This is not to say that Sri Lanka lacks them. Sadly our civilised society and systems of governance seem to permit investigations against those on the other side of the barricades while here there is no such distinction.

Even if such codes and rules of behaviour exist they are observed more in the breach as though the elected and selected are above and beyond the law.

Let’s be frank. Catch our police doing anything like fining our prime minister or even a tin pot politician from a pradeshiya sabha who decides to fell trees in a nearby forest or drain vital wetlands, is hardly likely to pay the price for his ecological sins.

Their acts would be dismissed as minor indiscretions and pardoned while a schoolchild picking a couple of fallen coconuts to cook the family meal would be hauled to the police station and possibly court for committing a ‘major’ crime.

The other day somebody sent me a video clip of traffic policeman leaping into the air like a national long jumper with acrobatic skill to descend on a man lying on a macademised street covering his head to escape the boots of the uniformed flatfoot.

Then there were images of a wounded law student apparently assaulted in a police station. These are but a sampling of what could happen to a citizen who happens to run into a policeman at the wrong time in the wrong place.

When one juxtaposes these images with the deferential — actually servile — manner in which politicians, politicians’ lackeys and even business persons are greeted by the police and even public officials one begins to wonder whether the proud boast “one law for all” is in fact true or a cynical slogan that comes trippingly off the tongue and stops there.

At that news conference presumably in Oslo, referred to above, the Police Commissioner made a perceptive remark. “Even if the law is equal for everyone not everyone is equal,” he said. Those able to understand the significance of those words would discern the distinction the Police Chief is drawing. Some of our lawmakers might be too dumb to see any difference.

They are probably like those ragtag teams of racist sycophants who poured onto American streets in response to Donald Trump’s clarion calls to white supremacists encouraged violence in US cities and towns.

Sri Lanka struggling to survive as a non-violent and peaceful Buddhist nation can do without the belligerence that is emerging from the dark side of the moon.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)