Letters to the Editor

Fast: Weapon of intimidation or tool of reform?
The letter to the Editor on “Time to prohibit fasting in public places” appearing in the Sunday Times of June 26, deserves attention as a timely and intrepid statement.

The legislation, the writer is asking for, to prohibit suicide and aiding and abetting thereof is already in the statute book. Section 302 of the Penal Code reads;

“Whoever attempts to commit suicide, and does any act towards the commission of such offence shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.”
Section 299 of the Code runs as follows;

“If any person commits suicide, whoever abets the commission of such suicide shall be punished with death.”
It would thus appear that suicide has become fashionable not due to a lacuna in the law but due to the lethargy of those who are entrusted with its enforcement. Is this lethargy caused by chicken-heartedness or brought about by extra-legal implications of the crime?

Politically, death fasts are essentially a weapon used by a minority to force the hand of a government in power. In that sense, they are a threat to democracy, which includes far - reaching consequences that may lead to anarchy in the long run. They amount to moral thuggery that enables one single individual to hold an entire government to ransom.

The obvious solution to this proliferating problem is to ignore the threat. In this connection I remember an incident that took place when I was Government Agent, Trincomalee, in the sixties, which I have recorded in my diary, now deposited at the Archives. I received a letter from a monk, informing me that he had started a death fast over some land dispute and asking me to come and solve it. I tore up the letter and put it in the waste-paper basket.

The monk had sent a copy of the letter to the Home Ministry also. At the proverbial speed of departmental communication, the copy had taken about a month to come up the ladder and be read by a staff officer. The Ministry got excited by the threat and sent me an urgent directive to visit the monk and settle the matter.

I responded to the directive in one sentence. I wrote, “If the monk actually carried out his threat, there can be nobody for me to visit and if he did not, there is no need for the visit.”

On mature reflection, I now realize that it is not always feasible or safe to ride roughshod over a death-fast. To my mind there are at least three reasons why such action may be unfair or counter-productive in certain situations. They stem from the weaknesses of the Democratic system.

In Democracy, rule by the majority is acceptable as a working arrangement. The problem is to ascertain where the majority is in between two elections.
The pendulum at the victor’s end on the day of the election, may swing to the opposite side at the next poll. At the midway point of the swing the majority crosses over to the opposition but the government continues to hold itself as the voice of the majority, right upto the day they are routed at the next election.

2. Our own experience has shown that in Structured Democracy, where the leader is strong, the tune is often called by the leader despite divergent thinking on the part of the majority of the ruling party, even when they are still in line with the aspirations of their electorate. In such a situation, the decision of the leader may not coincide with the thinking of the elected majority, although such decision may be the most rational in the circumstances.

3. The basic assumption of Democracy is that sanity is an invariable and inherent attribute of the majority. The objective of my play ‘Umatusanvarusava” written in the seventies was to question the rationality of this assumption. Human history has been enriched by the thinking of great men whose teaching was anathema to the majority of their compatriots. What if the solitary faster is another sage?The inevitable result of a death-fast ending in death in the first and the second situations above, would be rebellion, if the Martyr represented the wish of the de facto silenced majority. Death in the third situation would expose the entire nation to eternal ignominy in wiser times.

It would thus appear that control of death-fasts is not exclusively a simple function of the law. It calls for greater contributions from the country’s intelligentsia, the government in power and the people at large.

The intelligentsia must make an organized effort to build up a foolproof information system that would indicate the choice of the majority at any given time, so that the government of the day may be equipped with reliable tools to make solid decisions, without groping in the dark, when confronted with a showdown such as a death-fast.

They should also analyze and evaluate possible solutions to current problems that may be alien to the majority and familiarize them among the general public.
A concerted campaign has to be mounted to educate the people to realize the inequity and intimidation behind a death-fast under any circumstance, in which at times, a single individual may be pitched against a whole nation. The right thinking people have to be convinced to accept and expose ‘a death-fast’ as a weapon of moral terrorism.

There should also be a conscientious effort on the part of the government to deal with dissent openly and flexibly, thereby restraining frustrated dissidents rushing into rash alternatives. The more the opportunities and avenues created for conflict resolution the less will be the tendency to resort to confrontations.
The task is to identify more civilized and reasonable instruments of protest and persuasion for our Hampdens and Aristotles, and to smoke out the likes of the self-seeking pretender, I dealt with in Trincomalee.

Death for people, luxury for ministers
There seems to be a stiff competition between the authorities and the LTTE in respect of decimating the Sri Lankan population. The government apparently does not have the ability or will to lay down the small financial expenditure involved in setting up simple, (I stress simple by which I mean the sort of thing done by the late President Premadasa)guarded railway crossings, while Ministers of State are given the necessary funds to live and work in state of the art luxurious surroundings.

I would not be surprised, if following the public outcry over the preventable deaths, a sadly muted outcry, to say the least, some enthusiastic minister will come up with a proposal, which the cataract-ridden Ttreasury officials, will no doubt pass, for a high-tech, highly funded, electronic system of guarding railway crossings!

The 'Premadasa system' gave no scope for massive expenditure of public funds, involving huge payments to experts, local and abroad, and financial cuts to highly placed politicians and sycophantic public officials. Hence, the difficulty in implementing such a scheme.

It is sickening to read in the same issue of a prominent newspaper, of the alleged expenditure by a minister, (no denial offered, to my knowledge),of massive public funds, on a luxury office complex, while another minister -a spokesman at that, who now treads on the footprints of the 'Luxury Office' minister referred to-boldly asserts that the Health Services would have to be privatized, since the State did not have the necessay funds.

Is it not time that ministers sat down at a Cabinet meeting and banged their collective heads together hard, so that their non-functioning or malfunctioning neurones would be given a good, round shake up, which might rouse them from their collective slumber?

Rampaging beggars and besieged railway commuters
The standard of service at the Sri Lankan Railways has been deteriorating for the past three decades. The main reason for this is poor administration and financial difficulties.

In addition, we now find that begging in railway compartments, on platforms and at railway stations has become a nuisance to commuters. The beggars start at 5 a.m. and go on till about 10 p.m. They collect money going up and down along the carriages on the train and at the stations.

Some are blind or deaf, others disabled and some seem to have infectious diseases. There are others who collect funds for heart patients, kidney transplants etc. They come one after the other, with different stories, making a big din.

Their daily collection is about Rs. 2,000-3,000. They go to each and every commuter and if the person does not oblige, they tease and pass hints or even insult him/her.

Some passengers say the so-called beggars come in daily by van and go by van. Some have bodyguards to look after them and aid them, they say.
Some beggars live on the railway platforms. They cook food and use the station facilities and at night the toilets.

If the railway authorities are so keen to help the beggars, they can keep a till on each ticket counter and at the end of the month give the collection to genuine beggars. But allowing them to roam as they do is a crime. Immediate action should be taken to remedy this appalling situation.

'Letters to the Editor' should be brief and to the point.
Address them to:
'Letters to the Editor,
The Sunday Times,
P.O.Box 1136, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Or e-mail to
editor@sundaytimes.wnl.lk or
features@sundaytimes.wnl.lk
Please note that letters cannot be acknowledged or returned.