Columns

Under virtual ’hotel arrest’ in Bangkok, thoughts turn homebound

The people asked for Gota to go home, not for him to flee the country. If the ex-President chose self-exile to remaining at home, shouldn’t it be his lookout? Shouldn’t expenses incurred in taking flight, be his to bear from his own funds, and not from the public’s pauperised purse?

Apparently no, according to the Cabinet Spokesman. Definitely so, according to the Government Information Department.

At the weekly cabinet briefing on Tuesday, cabinet spokesman Minister Bandula Gunawardena told the media, “The Sri Lanka government paid the bill to provide former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to fly to Thailand from Singapore in a chartered flight last week”.

Claiming an ex-President’s right for his expenses to be reimbursed and the Government’s statutory duty to pay on the strength of the President Entitlement Act 1986, Minister Bandula exclaimed:

“Each and every executive president retired and widows of those passed away enjoy benefits, privileges and special facilities and they are also paid an allowance under the President Entitlement Act No. 4 of 1986. Therefore, the government is committed to paying former President Rajapaksa’s bills.”

GOTA’S ODYSSEY: Ex-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and wife Ioma, snapped outside Bangkok airport after leaving Singapore hideout following visa non-extension, tipped to be planning their homecoming

Gosh! This opens the floodgates for former presidents to cash in on public largesse.

What is sauce for the Gota gander is also sauce for the Chandrika goose. Now that the Minister has interpreted the President Entitlement Act as holding the State duty bound to meet the bills of ‘benefits, special privileges and special facilities’ enjoyed by past presidents internationally and not restricted to Lanka, what a stroke of luck for the other past presidents and even future past presidents.

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who served not two disastrous years — and did not flee in disgrace after bankrupting the State — but completed two solid terms as President, can now use the ‘Gota precedent’ and fly on a special chartered Gulfstream G550 jet rather than on any Sri Lankan or British Airlines scheduled commercial flight and claim expenses incurred from the State for her regular London-Colombo shuttle.

The same Gota sauce applies equally to the other past presidential geese as well. Next time Mahinda Rajapaksa, who also served two stints as President, gets the itch to check on Uganda’s equatorial clime or dine at Kampala’s Café Ceylon, he need not depend on some Ugandan millionaire’s patronage – or as son Yoshitha put it, ‘an uncle from Uganda, a family friend’ – to send a chartered jet but hire one himself at State expense.

If it had been a lack of resources that had so far kept the travel bug at bay for Yahapalana past President Maithripala Sirisena, a whole rabble of bugs will now be welcome to take a bite, for the coffers of the State will be at his disposal to finance his voyage of discovery in retirement. If denied, he and the others, citing the Gota precedent, can file action in the Supreme Court, claiming violation of the right to freedom of equality.

But is it all too-good-to-be-true for these past presidential gaggle of geese? Alas, before they start flapping their wings in a flutter, it’s time to bring them gently down to earth.

It is true that under this Act retired Presidents or widows are entitled to a Government rent-free house, an allowance equivalent to one-third of their presidential pension and a monthly secretarial allowance. Apart from these, Section 3(2) of the Act states: ‘There shall be provided to every former President and the widow of such former President, official transport and all such other facilities as are for the time being provided to a Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers.’

Are current Cabinet Ministers in the habit of country-hopping on special chartered planes or taking a world cruise on a specially chartered yacht while on private sojourns abroad? Or having long stays at 7-star hotels in the world’s capitals, leaving the Lankan public to pick up the tab? Nay, they are only provided official transport locally and travel, accommodation and allowance while abroad on official work. That’s all former Presidents are entitled under the Act.

Following Cabinet spokesman Bandula’s announcement to the media, misquoting the President’s Entitlement Act to justify payment, the Government Information Department seeks to deny it by saying that ‘the former president had spent his own private funds on his foreign visits’.

But where does that leave the public? Are the people to believe Cabinet Minister Bandula Gunawardena, the cabinet-appointed cabinet mouthpiece when he states that the State paid the bill? Or the faceless officials from the Government Information Desk when they say ‘he spent his own private funds on his private foreign visits’?

Did the Minister unwittingly let the cat out of the bag? Did the Government Info chaps rush to limit collateral damage? Will the public ever know whether their money was spent?

Where does that leave Gota? Has Ranil’s Government left him to the wolves to fend for himself without a dime in foreign climes?  Or is the ex-President carrying a pirate’s treasure chest with him to pay for his foreign adventures in self-exile? Or begging for alms from those he had fattened before his downfall, to eat humble pie for supper? Is this what Heaven’s malice grants ambition’s prayers for fleeting power?

Clicking his heels with wife and two Sri Lankan guards in a Maldivian island, snubbed by India which refuses landing rights and rejected by America which denies his visa request, this former all-American citizen, who renounced his US citizenship to bid for the Lankan presidency, finally settles for visa-free Singapore as his last resort port of call.

He lands in Singapore on a specially chartered flight. His arrival as the President of Lanka – as he still was – carries no special weight. Whereas a normal visitor to Singapore is usually granted a 30-day visa, the Lankan Head of State is given only a maximum of 14 days. From Singapore, he relinquishes the last remnant of his presidential status. He emails his resignation letter to the Speaker and, by flinging off the presidential regalia after having deserted his post and fled the country to abdicate abroad, becomes nothing more, nothing less than a commoner on the run.

Though his head hangs lighter having laid down the crown, his troubles are just beginning. Shorn of his armour of immunity, he stands exposed like a man on an open field, lost in a thunder storm, vulnerable to be struck down by sheet lightning from all quarters.

This is brought home to him when a rights group, the International Truth and Justice Project file a 63-page complaint on July 23 with Singapore’s Attorney General, seeking his arrest over human rights violations. Others file petitions to probe money laundering allegations.

On July 27, Singapore grudgingly extends his visa for another 14 days. Fearing Gota’s return might reflame smouldering embers, President Ranil Wickremesinghe tells the Wall Street Journal on August 1: “I don’t believe it’s the time for him to return.”

But Singapore stands firm. Not willing to babysit the orphaned Lankan, the Singapore Government swiftly sticks a ‘Return to Sender,’ label and refuses to extend the visa any further. Gota leaves Singapore on a special chartered flight to Thailand on August 11, the last day of his visa.

At the behest of the Lankan Foreign Office, the ex-Present is granted a three months temporary stay. Thai Prime Minister Chan O Cha says it’s on ‘humanitarian grounds’ and on condition he does not engage in political activity. It is literally ‘hotel arrest’ for Gotabaya when the Thais insist he remains within the hotel due to security reasons. His stay is made most unpleasant and unwelcome when he’s denied permission to visit religious sites or Bangkok’s other tourist hot spots.

Probably, feeling like a bird held captive in a gilded cage, no wonder his thoughts now turn toward home. He is homesick. His odyssey from president to fugitive, from an adulated idol to a persecuted international pariah, has taken its toll; and he yearns to return to the land which cannot refuse to accept him.

Despite his successor, President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s undisguised blunt message that he is not welcome in Lanka at this juncture, Gotabaya knows, ex-President or commoner, he has a constitutional right to return at any time of his choosing. Indeed he has.

Article 14 of the Constitution states: Every citizen is entitled to ‘the freedom to return to Sri Lanka.’ But, alas, even this right can be restricted by Article 15 if prescribed by law, including regulations relating to public security.

Even if allowed to return, Gotabaya will face the gauntlet of cases that now — without his presidential immunity — can be lined up against him. The prospect of arrest cannot be totally ruled out.

Perhaps, he is pondering on filing another fundamental rights petition, similar to the one he filed in May 2015 in the Supreme Court seeking the prevention of his ‘imminent arrest’ with or without a lower court warrant, which was temporarily granted to him by way of an interim order by a two-judge bench, chaired by the then Supreme Court Justice Eva Wanasundera, now Bribery Commissioner. But that seems a long shot now.

No wonder he is reported as now bent on reapplying for the US Green Card to regain US citizenship he once considered a disqualification. US officials do not view kindly even visa applications tended by those who have renounced their prized citizenship. But current American interests may dictate its best to hold Gotabaya under its thumb, in its own jurisdiction as a citizen. But there, too, he will be exposed to a slew of cases, rights groups may have lined up against him for alleged serious human rights violations.

For Gotabaya Rajapaksa, it seems, the wheel has turned full circle. His odyssey is at an end. The carnival is over and Lent has begun. The only solace being he will not be left bereft of appropriate lodgings with adequate security as a guest of the State for a number of years decided by his Fates. He may even come to hold ‘hotel arrest’ in Thailand, infinitely better than life at home.

And wonder why only he must reap the whirlwind when his whole family had sown the wind.

Bankrupt Lanka plan gala Independence Day jubilee India rolled out the barrel and laid the red carpet on Monday to celebrate 75 years of independence in grand imperial style and showed the world that beneath her ancient mystique, there beat the vibrant heart of a modern, secular, energetic state that had come of age. In the words of her first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, uttered 75 years ago, ‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom’. AWAKE TO FREEDOM: Seventy-five years in the making That India has sucked to the pips the sweet grapes of freedom and redeemed Nehru’s pledge in a substantial measure is evidenced by the gigantic strides taken in almost every facet of social and economic life. Her 572 billion dollar reserves held at the Reserve Bank, speaks volumes for her tremendous earnings in both her industrial and agricultural sectors. It even enables her to grant life-giving credit lines to her down and out beggared neighbours. This week when India celebrated Freedom Day with pomp and pageantry, it was no hollow boast. It was to showcase her legitimate triumphs. Reflect her achievements. Not to be outdone by Big Brother India’s grand show, Lanka now plans to hold a gala celebration to commemorate her own 75-year Independence Day on February 4 next year, Ranil’s first as President. Top guns in the present caretaker cabinet have been appointed this week to a Cabinet Sub Committee to ‘organise and monitor’ the diamond jubilee fete. The top ten are the President, the Prime Minister, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Health, Power and Electricity, Transport, Buddha Sasana, Fisheries and Public Security. No doubt under their direction the event will rival that of India’s festivities and showcase what the Lankan genius had achieved when free. But what will Sri Lanka — which gained the gift of independence just six months after India won hers by a peaceful Gandhian-style people’s struggle for liberation, forcing the British to ‘quit India’, exactly show as evidence she did not squander her new-found freedom by scraping coconuts these last 75 years but used it diligently to redeem the initial promise in full measure? What indeed have we done to justify hysterical outpourings of national pride when all around us lie a desolate wasteland as solid proof of our wretched failure? Unless, of course, we dedicate this year in which we turn 75, as the year the nation came of age, when a people’s peaceful struggle shook off the feudal yoke and finally won the true spirit of freedom from dictatorial, arrogant, corrupt rulers to become masters of their destiny. Perhaps, instead of fancy pseudo-independence razzmatazz, we should firmly resolve on February 4, 2023 — to paraphrase Lincoln – “that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the face of Lanka.”