Columns

So nice to hear that Sri Lanka’s democracy, constitution and sovereignty are safe in the hands of those with pips and chips on their shoulders who manned the barricades when the 225 stout, brave and dripping with rectitude met in the House of Democracy to vote a new president into the highest seat of power.

To praise them for their service to president and country, the new head of state was welcomed at the new army headquarters at Jayawardenapura, built with marble and all, where President Ranil Wickremesinghe was ceremonially greeted.

This is not the first time that Wickremesinghe had stepped into Sri Lanka’s Pentagon. That must have cost a pretty packet of taxpayers’ money even after the army’s original chunk of real estate at Galle Face was sold to Shangri La Hotel owned by a Singaporean.

That, of course, is where the Viyath Magarians used to meet before they got together to ruin the country with their vistas of prosperity and splendour which they fathered on a retired and nondescript Lt. Colonel.

The new president went to HQ after having made it to the top of the totem pole. Incidentally, somebody told me that the Attorney-General, the luminary of judicial integrity, rectitude and applaudable independence, was seen during that first visit by the president to meet the intrepid troops.

I cannot vouch for that bit of information. But if he was, one wonders what he was doing there unless it was to teach the troops a lesson or two about human rights and constitutional freedoms like freedom of association and assembly and law and disorder.

In our college and university days, we were told the AG meets people in his/her chambers and does not even want to be seen hanging around politicians in case it is seen to taint his independence. Those respected traditions, like politics and our economy have sunk so low that today’s youth speak of low and odour — and not because of pronunciation impediments either.

Anyway, there was President Wickremesinghe bestowing praise on the troops. Not for beating the hell out of some sleeping protesters at a time of night when blood-sucking vampires are said to appear, or so fiction tells us. There were no reports of blood being sucked but sure enough some was spilled.

No, they earned presidential praise for much more valiant actions that should surely be recorded in the annals of our modern Mahavamsa. Though no meritorious padakkam, were pinned they are bound to be awarded as the months roll by.

“Your actions that day,” said the President with obvious pride, “preserved the Constitution, Democracy and Sovereignty of the country.” After all, how often is it that on a single day somebody could save and preserve all three fundamental facets of modern nationhood?

Imagine saving the constitution when president’s counsel Romesh de Silva and his band of legal warriors have been battling in recent times to produce a brand new constitution to replace the one that his uncles, President Junius Richard the First and sibling Harry J produced nearly 45 years ago and when their nephew Ranil was a political novice cutting his teeth in Jayewardene artifice.

Now this sovereign nation is about to bin that constitution while the new one is all spruced and ready for the new president to place before the nation.

After all, the existing one is all chipped and chopped and violated so often by presidential decrees and edicts that would do Emperor Asoka proud. It has been so devalued over the years, the sooner it is dumped in the waste bin the better, save for a few copies to be preserved in the museum, and the national archives and be buried in a time capsule to be opened when this country like no other celebrates its 100 years of independence.

That is, of course, if all its assets have not been sold to a cabal of robber barons or emirs from the Gulf or in vaults in Uganda, Seychelles or San Marino or even to neighbouring Maldives or Bangladesh for a song or maybe two.

So the military heroics that the ranks of Tuscany (and Basil’s Pohottuwa foot soldiers) could scarce forbear to cheer, as Macauley wrote, when Horatius rose from the river waters, seem like a waste of effort. Why preserve a booklet that in its short life has been amended 20 times and will be amended again soon and has been desecrated by our rulers almost at will.

Just before one leaves the subject of our oft-degraded constitution, could we ask the framers of the new one to please shorten the name of the nation so that it at least begins to reflect the truth.

Would it not be more accurate and appropriate if the words “Democratic Socialist” are deleted from the title for not many of the citizens appear to believe that it is either democratic or socialist. Let me put it like this. We are more democratic than Kim Jong-un’s Democratic Republic of Korea and as socialist as Donald Trump.

There were two other patriotic acts President Wickremesinghe referred to — preserving democracy and sovereignty. If by democracy he meant that parliament by the Diyawanna Oya where a great democratic deed was performed that day.

On that day of moral and democratic awakening, 225 of its soul brothers (and sisters in case one is accused of gender discrimination), mainly those under the economic and political nourishment of a wizard with seven brains, voted in a never before experienced democratic gesture that would have had the great thinkers of ancient Greece, the architects of democracy, rise from their graves and join in sustained applause.

It is this oya-side abode that houses convicted criminals held guilty of extortion, others who have faced varied charges or are still facing charges before courts, and those who have had charges but had them dropped by presidential commissions or the AG.

Then there are those who in 2018 started brawls in the chamber in good democratic fashion throwing chairs and other missiles, destroying microphones on MPs’ tables, injuring others and even the police who entered the chamber to end the disturbance. This is not to mention the bags of chilli powder dissolved in water brought to hurl at fellow members and the others.

A committee appointed by the Speaker later named 59 MPs who ended up in the melee and five who were named as responsible for it all. The CID was said to have inquired and were ready to file charges against them but in typical Sri Lankan democratic fashion, all that was supposed to have been dropped after political intervention.

This of course was not the only occasion when vulgar and disgraceful conduct by representatives of the sovereign people and sustained shouting of “kauda hora” (who is the thief) has interrupted proceedings.

Such is our country’s democratic zeal and that of its leaders that MPs are not only paid monthly salaries but allowances for attending parliamentary sessions which is what they are elected for, to begin with.

If the parliament of the last several years is held up as the citadel of our democracy and the quality and conduct of the people’s representative epitomises our democratic values the less of it that is preserved for future generations, the better it would be.

Our to-be-discarded constitution states that sovereignty lies with the people. Some of those sovereign people lie in remand custody for exercising their constitutional rights while some others lie on the sea beach opposite the GotaGoGama.

And to make sure that sovereignty is alive and kicking, a thuggish khaki-clad army officer was caught on video kicking a sovereign citizen in the chest before crowds of people at a filling station. On another occasion, a junior officer manhandled a policeman performing his appointed duty at another filling station.

There are many more such incidents that relate to how the constitution, democracy and sovereignty are preserved for the world to see. And the world has already seen much more on video and mobile cameras for today’s leaders underestimate the promptness of modern communications.

All this and more in verbal communication will surely be made available to a delegation from the UN Human Rights Council due here in preparation for next month’s session of the UNHRC in Geneva where Sri Lanka will face another updated report and a new resolution.

Governments and their spokesmen of various sorts have oft complained that accusations against Sri Lanka lack evidence or confirmation and are sometimes edited. That does happen because film footage is sometimes doctored to suit the narrative.

But it is a defence hard to maintain when there are multiple sources that confirm the point at issue.

(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)