Columns

How is the law equal to all in Sri Lanka when some stray citizen unwarily dropping his mask at a tea kiosk is suddenly hoisted aloft by law enforcement officers in glistening Martian suits and carried kicking and screaming to waiting blue buses (not white vans) to be booked for violation of quarantine regulations while a Minister airily overrides the recommendation of the district health officer to declare an area lockdown in Piliyandala?

Determining the greater locus of infection

If anything is required to explain how important the law is to our lives, our health, our very survival, this would be it. As the country erupted in alarming waves of covid-19 transmission this week, we were told that Piliyandala accounted for much of the spread in the Western Province. So, was the greater locus of infection that obscene ‘Ministerial’ cluster or some individual case here or there? Or should we name the whole of Sri Lanka as the great ‘Political Virus’ cluster, perchance? This may be needed if the precedent of blustering politicians fancying themselves as medical administrators continue.

Indeed, it does not need a magic wand to predict what will happen next. The unfortunate populations of Brazil, the United States and India have been crucified in their thousands due to ignorant braggadocio by populist leaders. That sickness in populist politics invading the global North to the South has translated, quite literally, to lives lost in staggering numbers. Still, we have not learnt our lessons. In the United States, Donald Trump boasted that covid-19 would soon disappear and asked his adoring fans to drink disinfectant to combat the virus while aghast medical experts stood in horrified silence.

Americans died like flies as a result, numbering also staunch Republican allies who probably believed to their dying day that their beloved President was right. In Brazil, a Trump wannabe is now facing an inquiry over the handling of the global pandemic as surging numbers of deaths and infections still paralyse the country. And next door to us, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Government forges ahead with a proposed renovation of the Indian parliament, including a dashing new ‘home’ for himself with a cost label of nearly two billion dollars while thousands die for lack of oxygen in the nation’s capital. India has become the gruesome epicentre of the pandemic, affecting the whole of South Asia.

Populism that kills human beings

So the lesson that our giant and grievously afflicted neighbour teaches us goes far beyond the criminal lack of preparedness of its Government for what was inevitable. Even as our hearts are stricken for the Indian people, we must understand that this is what populism, jingoism and chauvinism for profits and power gifts to citizens. What do we have in Sri Lanka but much of that same populism? Last year, competent state health sector professionals cautiously navigated the country’s complex political labyrinth, yet keeping the confidence of the public with sensible policy decisions.

Following a fraught Presidential election, a Government-in-waiting lapped up the plaudits it got for that effort. This was majorly why the Rajapaksa led- Podujana Party was handed a momentous electoral victory by a grateful public.  Now we see the converse as the Centre dissolves, directives issued at the top are disregarded in almost all areas, from the prices of essential goods wildly rocketing out of control to random politicians dictating health policy. Money spinners are devised out of keeping the virus alive whether it be through quarantine processes and travel packages and yes-men at the helm of the state anti-covid drive struggle to explain themselves as to why their decisions are overridden by uncouth Ministers popping up like jack-in-the-boxes to explain that they are ‘acting in the interests of their people.’

And it is not only in health policy that the law is reduced to a parody. Not content with Parliament deciding to move on a Resolution to ‘implement’ (illegal) recommendations of a fact finding Commission of Inquiry to ‘withdraw’ ongoing prosecutions and to ‘set aside’ convictions affirmed by the highest court in the land, ruling politicians continue to cast aspersions on the Bench. This is part of the Government’s strategy to nullify the authoritative imprimatur of the Court, aided and abetted by their clones in the legal profession.

An unbearable crudity to attacks on the Court

The damage done to legal and judicial institutions by such imprudent moves goes far beyond transient power hungry motives of ruling politicians. Not that Sri Lanka is unaccustomed to such attempts as judicial history bears witness to, under the Presidencies of Jayawardene, Kumaratunge and Rajapaksa (the First). Indeed, the removal of a sitting Chief Justice by a presidential letter by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration is yet another example of the above. This was all the more treacherous as it was accomplished under the banner  of ‘good governance.’

Trenchant critiques of that ‘yahapalanaya’ move in these column spaces predicted at the time that this entirely unwarranted action will return to haunt us. As indeed it has done now, given rumbling threats by the Government to ‘correct’ that ‘dismissal.’ What form that ‘correction’ may take is anybody’s guess. It is safe to assume that this will again result in one more hammer blow to the institutional integrity of the judiciary. Our plight therefore is due not only to what our politicians have done but also our own actions for uncritically supporting favourites in power in a quid pro quo exchange for personal or professional profit.

Even so, there is, I must confess, an unbearable crudity to what we see now. In Parliament a few days ago, the Minister of Public Security was apparently proceeding on the assumption that he had been vested with judicial power to comment on the correctness of the conviction of Sunil Ratnayake for the unlawful killings of eight Tamil civilians in Mirusovil (2000) including children who were returning to their shelled out homes to collect firewood. Though five soldiers were indicted, four were acquitted on the basis that the evidence was insufficient to implicate them while only Ratnayake was convicted (2015).

An existential struggle between ‘first’ and ‘fist’

Ratnayake was pardoned by President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa last year leading to extensive public concern given the barbaric nature of the crime. If the Public Security Minister had confined himself to the fact of the pardon, that is one thing. But here, what we heard was his explanation during a heated exchange with former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka  that the pardon was issued because the conviction itself was due to a ‘terrorist’ giving evidence. First, if a Minister can pronounce on the correctness of a judicial verdict, why do we not dispense with our courts once and for all?

Second, does a uniform give the licence to rape, kill and torture? Sri Lanka’s highest court has said no, decades ago, (Wijesuriya v the State, 77 NLR, 25 or otherwise known as the ‘Premawathie Manamperi case’). Perhaps the Minister of Education and an erstwhile law professor who should have remained in academia, may explain the fundamental tenets of that reasoning with which he is excruciatingly familiar to his excitable colleague in Government benches.

This was the value of courts and judges then. As activist practitioners, we struggled to keep those values alive. Yet the calamitous failure of those efforts are clear. Essentially, what the country is left with now is the boast to ‘be first’ while being anything but ‘first.’ Indeed, it is a curious fact that, shorn of the ‘r’ in ‘first, what we have is the word, ‘fist.’ The ‘fist’ is what populist dictators show, metaphorically and literally. It remains to be seen what will win in Sri Lanka in this struggle between the ‘first’ and the ‘fist.’

That existential struggle will determine the survival of the nation as a functional but flawed democracy.