Focus on Rights

Sombre reflections on a year gone by
We face during the coming week, the fading away of a year during which we have marked our country's failures in more grandiose ways than usual. From one extreme end of the scales, daily life has become even more perilous for the ordinary Sri Lankan. The spiraling rise in crime, car-jackings in broad daylight and the general breakdown of law and order coupled with dangerous linkages of the underworld with policemen and politicians is now part of a fundamentally distorted social ethos.

Lodging a mundane entry at a police station in relation to the loss of an identity card or a breach of the peace has become a task that anyone will avoid at all costs. Indeed, coping with the most basic societal necessities from the disposal of garbage to the proper control of traffic systems is now fraught with tension. And thousands of tsunami victims still languish in their misery, adding their numbers to the thousands of persons internally displaced by the decades long war. Despite the massive quantities of aid that have poured in, their plight remains only as grist for the newspaper mill rather than constituting the core around which serious efforts to remedy their situation are centred. The collective psychological and social trauma that this country will continue to experience therein for generations yet unborn, is incalculable.

This prevailing state of national grief is, of course, aggravated by the escalating conflict in the North. The coming year will show us whether, as the optimists predict, the LTTE will not resort to war as part of their harassment strategy. Given the increased ferocity of their attacks during these months, the optimists may well be disastrously wrong. If so, our capacity to cope with the rigours of the battlefield despite a currently weakened intelligence and chronically dysfunctional political systems, will be tested to its utmost.

In the process, inflammatory statements that the country should not hesitate to march into the North by individuals who are apt to pontificate on such matters from the safety of the capital city with their sons and daughters ensconced in some city abroad, will be of little worth. In fact, it is high time that these persons are exposed for the oratorical hypocrites that they really are.

From another extreme, in so far as institutional integrity is concerned, public respect for institutions such as the public service, the police and the judiciary remain at the lower end of the scales. By year end, appointments to the second term of the Constitutional Council around which the viability of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution revolves, have yet not been made.

Hilariously, blame is cast on different entities at different times. At one point, we are still told that the minority parties have not still been able to agree on a nominee despite contrary news reports some time back indicating that a consensus had, in fact, been reached. At another time, the government blames the stalemate on the opposition, saying that opposition consent had not been given to the joint nominees to the Council. This is however, in contradiction to a request made previously by a high ranker in the opposition benches who writes to a newly elected President, requesting him to ensure that the Independent Police, Public Service and Elections Commissions are in place. Constituting the Constitutional Council is mandatory for this purpose as they exercise powers in the recommending of appointments to those Commissions. And so the merry go round continues.

In the meantime, we have a non-functioning National Police Commission, no Election Commission, (despite the public pledge by President Mahinda Rajapakse on the acceptance of his electoral victory that one of his first tasks would be to allow the current Elections Commissioner to relinquish office), and no Public Service Commission. The term of the current National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) will also expire early next year, which means that if the Constitutional Council is not appointed by that date, there will be no NHRC as well. Protests have been made in this regard by some civil society organisations, including most recently the Organisation of Professional Associations (OPA).

What is important to note is the clear lack of political will to have these Commissions functioning independently. A recent pointer to this were statements attributed this week by some newspapers to President Rajapakse wherein the Cabinet had reportedly been informed by him that the government does not intend to re-commence the National Police Commission until the 17th Amendment is further amended to enable the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to also constitute part of the Commission.

On an earlier occasion, Minister of Law and Order Ratnasiri Wickremenayake also made similar remarks. While Minister Wickremenayake's observations may be taken in a somewhat lackadaisical manner given his tendency for off the cuff remarks, similar statements made by the incumbent in the Office of the Presidency, embodying as they do, a definite government policy, carries far more alarming import. It must be recalled that the Commission was set up precisely for the purpose of monitoring the police system independently from the system and consequently, from the IGP himself. This is how bodies of this nature function worldwide.

For example, the much respected Independent Police Commission in the United Kingdom whose role in the inquiry into the Menzies shooting by the London police during the terror attack this year, is presently the subject of wide public discussion, does not have the Metropolitan Police Commissioner as one of its members. To suggest that Sri Lanka's National Police Commission should have the IGP sitting within its ranks is a notion so absurd that it would be laughable if it not were so tragic. The fact that such an idea reportedly originated from the office of the Presidency is worse. If, as has been pointed out, the past years have shown that the NPC should have some membership which can testify to the practical workings of the police force, then, at the very least, a retired IGP or senior police officer with proven integrity ought to be appointed to its ranks.

Having a serving IGP as a member is indefensible.
And all this while government spokesmen make themselves hoarse at international human rights fora on their commitment to improve the functioning of the country's institutions. I wonder as to what the situation would be if representatives of the Attorney General's Department and the Foreign Ministry put forward this novel addition to the ranks of the National Police Commission next time they defend the country's record before the United Nations Sub Commission or for that matter, the UN Human Rights Committee or the Committee Against Torture. Stern initiatives need to be launched both domestically and internationally in regard to any efforts by the government to effect such changes to the composition of the National Police Commission if these reports are indeed grounded in fact.

Within the past year, the only positive feature was that we were able to have an election in the country without the levels of electoral violence evidenced earlier. But is that sufficient? Confronting a new year which shows little potential that the country will be able to redeem its past legacies of renewed war, a backsliding economy and basic institutional failures, this is a question that commands its own deeply troubling negative answer.

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