Columns

Somebody quite perceptively named the upcoming rush for the presidency “an election like no other.” As though there isn’t enough evidence to justify this, the government, in its latest move that oozes with wisdom and foresight, has decided to offer arms to MPs ahead of next month’s political bust-up.

What is not mentioned is whether these weapons are for defensive or offensive purposes. Nobody really knows who will use which for what purpose because already MPs are entitled to sidearms.

The Defence Ministry masterminds have offered each MP two 12-bore repeaters in addition to those already provided, which those like Lohan Ratwatte have now and then brandished with seeming authoritative glee like Clint Eastwood playing “Dirty” Harry.

It is bad enough that the massive publicity-backed campaign to clear the badlands of gangsters and drug dealers, which resulted in several thousand being arrested and many detained in the name of “Yukthiya”. the propagandist name which was to end in glorious victory for Public Security Minister Tiran Alles and his ‘Tonto’, police chief Deshabandu Tennekoon, who thankfully has gone into silence.

But the six-month deadline ending in June to wipe out the twin menaces launched with such bravura has, alas, been extended. Those acquainted with local news would concur all that was big talk for the “pathalayas,” as they are called, and the illicit importers of drugs and their henchmen still continue despite all the hoopla about how they were crushed.

Most of all the violence, the murderous and vicious stories that make the news wires, is evidence that Sri Lanka is beginning to sound like the old American Wild West, and the indiscriminate killings and violence of the time are mainly because weapons—stolen, locally manufactured, or smuggled in—are very much in circulation.

The number of shootings and resultant murders is proof enough that deadly weapons are still available for contract killings or to end personal feuds.

While all this evidence is clearly available to law and lawless agencies, how could a government add to the armoury of some of the biggest bores who ever entered parliament, with 12-more bores—I mean guns, not more MPs, some of whom carry criminal records as though they were glorious escutcheons and others suspected of dubious dealings?

Would carrying a few extra bores not be an insult to the biggest bores in the country with already self-inflated egos, dismissively treated by a public bored to death with some of the most inane and boring speeches ever to disgrace Hansard.

Many are suspicious of the IMF’s intentions in going along with government timidity in negotiations rather than genuinely demanding measures to rescue the increasing numbers sinking below the poverty line or facing burgeoning economic hardships. They believe this is even a bigger ruse than this government has been guilty of.

Those acquainted with the IMF Governance Diagnostic Assessment report and other remarks made during interviews or statements to the media know what issues of importance the IMF has underlined.

It has repeated more than once the dire need to arm institutions supposedly fighting corruption that exists at various levels of governance with wider and more stringent powers, arm state institutions and boards with competent management capable of resuscitating them without filling them with political acolytes, and arm major revenue-earning institutions with more legal powers to catch non-taxpayers and the offenders who seem to be in plenty.

But then one’s use and knowledge of language do get in the way of comprehension, as did happen to the NPP’s Lal Kantha recently when what he said—perhaps not too clearly from the stage—did lead to misinterpretation, deliberately or otherwise leading to NPP bashing.

So perhaps the same thing happened to some of those at the Defence Ministry who have spent most of their lives carrying arms, and arms means weapons.

It does seem that the IMF’s intentions have been badly misconstrued, or some wag with a penchant for humorous tale-twisting is at work, especially since election time always presents enough opportunity for comic interludes or catchy and pithy slogans and cartoons.

Although the IMF might not have actually used the word “arm” to propose toughening of laws to catch those pilfering from the state, hiding away ill-gotten wealth in offshore accounts or in property abroad as the Pandora and Panama Papers exposed, and other political dipping of hands into state assets, that is obviously what is meant.

And that is how journalists and other commentators and observers would have termed it: to keep an arm’s (there we go again) distance from the IMF’s bureaucratic tautology.

But what must surely worry both the public and even drive fear into our people is politicians with pistols stuck in the belts and heavier weapons in their arms parading as though they are readying for the “Gun fight at OK Corral”.

Those who remember their Shakespeare would recall how Caesar’s ghost appeared and said to Brutus, “We shall meet at Philippi.”

Just imagine if some opposition politician in ghostly form appears at midnight to a Pohottuwa politician now well ensconced in government and utters, “We shall meet at Kesbewa.” Would he, like Brutus, march to battle with his two 12-bores and end it all?

It was only last year that Defence State Minister Pramitha Bandara Tennekoon told MPs that 100 or more out of 150 of their species who had been issued guns between 1980 and 1990 had not returned their weapons. Some of them, said State Minister Tennekoon, had passed away.

While one might commiserate with their next of kin, it is hardly likely they took their State-issued weapons with them wherever they went.

So, what one might conclude from State Minister Tennekoon’s disclosure is that the guns are still somewhere around, but with whom and where is the question. That information may not be known to the public, which, for almost 35 years, was unaware of the brazen audacity of the so-called representatives of the people.

And now the government approves the release of more guns to our representatives for their personal use, not even checking whether they can shoot, never to be returned as long as some meagre licence fee is paid annually.

But that does not mean the weapons remain safely locked up in their cupboards along with tenders that somehow escaped public scrutiny because they were never made public, that they will not be used by henchmen for nefarious activities.

The government mentions 100 who have not returned their weapons. Has the government asked them for the weapons, and what action has it taken to retrieve them? Some are dead and gone. But surely they did not take them wherever they went.

Instead, like the alms they distributed to voters, such as kilos of rice and lowered prices of some essentials and the right to land, they are now offering weapons, ready for a good fight or busting up the elections.

Anything is possible in this fair isle.

(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).