Columns

It will be exactly one month tomorrow since the scandalous conduct of an officer of the Panadura police raised howls of protests not just in Sri Lanka but internationally too. And as the anger of the common citizenry mounted and opprobrium from around the world spread, the pro forma excuses were trotted out, and investigations were promised.

Like the myriad of other promises that have emanated from the mouths of politicians and their faithful lackeys that ended up with commissions of inquiry and impartial investigations, this time too they came thick and fast. And so, the people wait like Godot as they have waited a thousand times before, for the final reports that would apportion blame and hold the responsible accountable.

Well, if one grows to be as old as Methuselah one might be able to excavate some of those final reports (some of which are yet to reach parliament), entombed in some dark, dusty room, untouched, unread like some Pandora Paper report that then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa commissioned but then disappeared from sight.

Yet other matters lie in the Attorney-General’s Department awaiting legal autopsy but are as mummified as the Egyptian pharaohs after years of inattention and neglect, especially if they concern politicians from the government side—no matter which government.

But then you don’t expose your kith, kin and acolytes to the rigours of legal justice. Well, not in this Resplendent Isle though it might happen even in places as near as Malaysia where the former prime minister and wife were convicted for corruption, or as distant as Argentina where Vice President Cristina Kirshner was sentenced to a six-year prison term for a 1 billion dollar fraud.

They end up in prison serving their sentences unlike our politicians, one of whom, for instance, was given a three-year term of rigorous imprisonment (suspended, of course) for extortion while in office, but now sits comfortably in the cabinet and contributes to the rubbish that accumulates in Diyawanna Oya.

Given the history of governance in the country and the lies, damned lies and sleight of mouth, nobody—unless they are cronies and acolytes living off the fat of politicians — believes in this self-serving tosh about immediate investigations, impartial inquiries and punishing the guilty.

Let’s not forget there was another side to the Panadura pantomime. Just yards away a phalanx of uniformed policemen stood on Galle Road somewhere in Panadura. One would have thought they were re-playing scenes from the early 15th-century siege of the Kingdom of Kotte by the Chinese Admiral He, sometimes called Ho.

Whether it was He or Ho matters not a jot. Of immediate concern is the ho-ha at Panadura that day which brought helmeted policemen donning masks and possibly senior officers with side arms as one had seen frequently at other scenes, to the streets of Panadura.

They were apparently to man the ‘battlements’ against the evil-doers determined to chase away more of the corrupt politicians and their cronies who have brought the country down to what it is.

Passers-by might well have been mistaken into thinking that the gathered stormtroopers formed the frontline defence against a nascent wave of marauding aragalayists determined to march to that seaside promenade which they once occupied but where the grass has begun to grow, or so we are told.

But pray, what was it all about? All these preparations with battalion-strength defence columns (or it seemed) were to confront two women with a placard each walking peacefully on the roadside towards Colombo to register their protest against what they, like thousands of others, perceived as a blatant violation of the law—the use of the PTA to detain two activists initially for 90 days.

If such force was necessary to stop and apprehend two peaceful citizens, it is scant wonder that presidents Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe have, in the last three years, bloated the defence budget beyond recognition while people are unable to feed their families and school-going children are suffering from malnutrition.

That grimace that adorned the angry face of that police officer would have been sufficient to drive children who saw those videos or pictures of that incident in the electronic or print media to scary nightmares or normal citizens to wonder what would await them if they ever ended up behind closed doors in a police station. It seemed like scenes out of that B-grade movie “The Incredible Hulk”.

As soon as news broke of what happened on a main road and was captured in pictures, there was a flurry of activity in official circles to cover up the whole unsavoury episode by promising investigations into this incident and threats of action against any police officer guilty of violating the law or physical abuse or whatever euphemism was used to cover police behaviour.

Everybody got into the act with promises of action but actually looking for a carpet big enough to sweep this incident under it as often happens and not only where the uniformed kind are concerned. The DIG Western Province, IGP, the National Police Commission got into the act with the Police Spokesman SSP Thalduwa trying to create an air of impartiality with a thin veneer of legal underplay as is often done to camouflage police indiscretions and more heinous acts.

So what has happened to the inquiry and what is its outcome? The only thing I have read so far is a comment to a newspaper by the Chairman of the National Police Commission and a former IGP Chandra Fernando. Yes, the same Chandra Fernando who raised a thousand eyebrows when he was seen at the BIA VIP lounge trying to get a word edgewise with Basil Rajapaksa alias “KK” who had returned to Colombo early one morning recently.

Fernando’s explanation for his presence inside the VIP lounge-and indeed his presence at the airport in the wee hours of the morning appeared as wishy-washy as his statement to the newspaper.

His remarks do not say who held any inquiry, if there was one, but what it seems like is an attempt to free the beefy Police OIC of any wrongdoing, especially if he has political backing.

Fernando said he does not consider the manner in which the two women officers were held by their necks and pushed as “harassment” but the officer had only “positioned” the two women constables.

Positioned them for what pray? One wonders whether Chandra Fernando in his days in the police had also positioned women constables or officers as the OIC had done and claimed it was no harassment.

Maybe it is an error in nomenclature. Perhaps it was bullying that the former IGP was thinking of.

Anyway, he goes on to say: “What happened there was two female protestors were to be arrested, and male police officers were not permitted to handle them. Therefore, some female police officers had been called, and where were they? They were standing at the back, but their role should have been in the front.

“When the arrests were to be made, female officers were not available, and so they were pushed to the front by the OIC. How can this be harassment? Harassment is something totally different. At that moment, the OIC (Pinto) was stressed, and the female PCs, who should have been assisting him, were at the back.”

He does not explain why the two women had to be arrested. What law had they broken? Could he quote the relevant law? Is it against the law to carry placards? Is action being filed in court against them?

Had the women police been told at the start that they should be “positioned” in front but did not. Then they should be reprimanded not dragged by their necks in public if not harassing them, but humiliating them.

Chairman Fernando, one thing could be said for you. You do provide a good laugh in these hard times. As Oliver Twist said could we have more, please?

(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.)