Policing the Police
Last week in these very columns we urged the Interior Ministry to ‘do something’ to turn the clock of crime back - instead, we find the Minister only asking people not to believe the newspapers (see our Business Section) and a classic case of sheer incompetence displayed this week in Matara. A UNP MP is reported to have intimidated a postal worker (see our news story) and for three days the local police have still not dared to question the MP, though as often happens the victim has been quizzed.

It was only the other day that the Matara police looked helplessly the other way when a Cabinet Minister from the constituency cut a historic tree of archaeological value. This is Sri Lanka lost, not re-gained.

If the Matara police is so docile and spineless, Police HQ ought to send a special team to investigate these crimes by politicians running amok as if the areas they represent in Parliament are their fiefdoms. In this plague of police politics, a consoling or positive note came from the chairman of the Independent Police Commission. If vicitms of police inaction or injustice make a complaint to the Commission, it has the power to probe and remedy the situation. Brave words, but can they truly deliver? Has the Commission the muscle to do the policing the police find difficult to do themselves?

Patients before patents
After several days of intense and see-saw bargaining with the United States of America continuing with its bullying tactics, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) yesterday reached a deal to ensure that economically poor Third World countries like Sri Lanka would have regular access to quality medicine at affordable prices.

The agreement is designed to allow poor countries which do not have their own pharmaceutical industries to import low cost 'generic' copies of patented medicines to fight diseases such as AIDS and malaria.

Sri Lanka reportedly did not play any more than an observer or casual role at the Geneva meeting but the country now needs to make full use of the concessions and flexible mitigatory provisions obtained for the Third World.

Two months ago the Supreme Court in an exemplary case of judicial activism struck down several clauses relating to patent rights in an Intellectual Property Bill which the government attempted to rush through Parliament in what appeared to be yet another attempt (like the fingerprinting saga viz-a-viz UK visas) to please the Big Powers at the expense of our own people.

The State Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Corporation has not been developed to make a substantial contribution by way of local production. Till that is done the government could use the compulsory licensing provision to authorise an Asian company to produce drugs for Sri Lanka at affordable prices.

Undoubtedly, the pharmaceutical multi-nationals must spend huge sums on Research and Development, and to them must go the gratitude of the multitude for pushing the frontiers of medicine and health care. But if a hard headed trader like the WTO has been persuaded to give a humanitarian face to the market economy then no drug barons or drug industry-oriented officials must be allowed to deny the fundamental right of humanity to get quality medicine at affordable prices.

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