Columns

One is overcome by a sense of déjà vu these days. Right now in London we have witnessed a political tragi-comedy played out by an arrogant and stubborn prime minister. Boris Johnson seems to believe that laws and rules are made for the people and not for him and those closest to him.

He is not the only person who suffers from delusions of power and grandeur. Sri Lankans will easily name many who entertain such thoughts that elected to power absolves them and their acolytes from being subject to the constitution and the country’s laws.

Johnson deluded himself that the huge mandate which brought him to power in December 2019- one month after Gotabaya Rajapaksa- has bequeathed to him the right to transgress the law in perpetuity-that is beyond one term in office especially if the public adulation he won as the ‘war hero’ in the “Battle for Brexit” would be sufficient for a long stay at No: 10 Downing Street.

Now where have we heard such self-glorification and usurpation of rights before? Why, in our Resplendent Isle –which was so once upon a time until successive politicians turned it to a country like no other– which foreign governments today are advising their citizens to avoid like a plague unless absolutely necessary.

It started several months ago in Sri Lanka where a collapsing economy, shortages of essentials and rising living costs caused by ill-conceived, short-sighted, and even ludicrous policies were heaped upon a people and the country driving it to wrack and ruin.

Unable to bear the foolishness that passed for good and clever governance making survival increasingly difficult for its citizens, people took to the streets decrying its rulers and government. Eventually thousands of people from various parts of the country congregated in Galle Face Green marking a semi-permanent presence that was unprecedented in our history.

Their cry, nay demand, was that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brothers and relatives holding ministerial office resign and the president return home to whence he came.

Here in London the demand for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to resign after the latest scandal in a series, and other indiscretions that questioned his honesty, integrity and judgment, had gathered enough traction by Tuesday.

By Thursday morning as I sat to write this, 52 senior cabinet minister, ministers, junior ministers and other Conservative Party MPs holding government positions had quit, some of them writing strong letters that pointed accusatively at Johnson’s lack of honesty and integrity, his attempts to mislead parliament, covering up his errors of judgment and violating laws and rules which he himself had made during the Covid pandemic.

On Wednesday night a close aide of Johnson said on TV that the prime minister was “buoyant” and was determined to stick it out and had said the only way to get him out of No 10 would be to drag him out of it.

Such braggadocio was typical of the man. He was not hovering in No 10 or hiding elsewhere surrounded by armed police and soldiers. He was in his office receiving ministers and others in a show of defiance.

But for all his show of bravado one was sure his days were numbered and a night of the “Long Knives” was only round the corner. The coup de grace came even before I could finish this column.

With opposition within his own ranks heavily weighted against him Johnson announced he was quitting but there was no sign of contrition, of remorse. Rather he did not resist a last- minute swipe at party MPs who coalesced against him, decrying the “herd instinct” destroyed him.

At least he did the decent thing and resigned, albeit with no credible alternative available. Still political decency, though battered and bruised, does survive in the country and in the political system unlike some other places we know where the political DNA would need to be completely exorcised if a new socio-political system is to replace the corrupt, oligarchic and manipulative one under which the citizenry has suffered so long and continues to suffer today more than at any other time we have known.

With a respite in Westminster until the next round when the search begins for a successor it is time to return to despicable, disgusting and illegal happenings in Sri Lanka that is increasingly turning into a mad hatters’ playground.

The recent video evidence of a uniformed military officer kicking an unarmed civilian in the chest at a filling station is yet another example of those in uniform acting as though they are above and beyond the law. This video has been in circulation globally and will surely figure when the next report on Sri Lanka is presented to the UN Human Rights Council in September.

Such episodes will only provide more fodder in the way of accumulating evidence now being collated by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights on violations of individual and collective rights and freedoms by Sri Lanka’s forces of law and disorder and the armed forces.

Instead of being apologetic and stating that an inquiry would be held by the army into the actions of the military officer, the army issues a statement that in tone and tenor is little different from government statements when caught with the hand in the cookie jar.

Whoever was the author of this ridiculous defence of the officer’s actions tries desperately to pitch the blame on the media. Here is a quote from this piece of nonsense.

“A series of media reports including many social media blogs and video clips going viral, some of which are intentionally edited or projecting only one side or tail end of the dispute or extracted clips without properly projecting true ground realities have been observed by the Army where Army personnel are being humiliated or verbally abused while trying to assist proper distribution of fuel stocks. Such attempts go quite contrary to basic media ethics, too.”

The army’s suggestion that the video clip was “intentionally edited” to show the “tail end of the dispute” is a curious piece of logic. It was at the tail end that the officer set upon the civilian who was held by two officers who seemed to be from the police and was in no way violent. There were at least 10 army soldiers and policemen at the spot and there was no chance of the man escaping. Yet the army officer decided to kick the man in the chest.

If the video showed the “tail end of the dispute” it was surely because that was the news- a subdued civilian already in the hands of the law and not trying to escape being kicked for no valid reason.

It was the army officer that created the news surely by violating the law by assaulting a non-violent civilian. The statement admits it referring to the “aggressive nature of the army member” which it says was “excessively prioritised” whatever that means.

There is no space to analyse the statement further. Yet one cannot ignore that only a few days earlier the army tried to defend its action of removing protesters from the Galle ramparts again violating the law. It was said the Australian cricketers had demanded it.

This was denied by the Australian cricketers including if I remember their Captain Pat Cummings. Before trying to lecture on “basic media ethics” the army spokesman should understand what constitutes truth.

During the anti-LTTE war when Sri Lankan forces were being accused of human rights violations then President Mahinda Rajapaksa said Sri Lankan soldiers went to war with gun in one hand and the human rights convention in the other.

Maybe that is why the officer used his leg- his hands being otherwise occupied carrying a weighty tome on human rights.

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