The crime rate in the city and suburbs is reported to be increasing at an alarming rate. The rising cost of living, increasing unemployment and under-employment trends as well as other economic problems may also be contributing to the criminalisation of society.
Many criminals today are known to have links to powerful politicians. The police say it is a waste of time to pursue some cases because most of them inevitably end with a politician intervening to thwart the course of justice. The criminalisation of politics has resulted in a very strong bond between the politician and the underworld.
Senior policemen have themselves set bad examples. See how private bus operators behave like killers and maniacs on the road. Many of these buses are owned by senior policemen and so the bus operators do not give a damn for the people or for the highway code. If top cops protect law breakers like this what could we expect from lower rankers.
In the good old days the DIG of the area would come down hard on the SP and the SP on the OIC of a station when crimes took place. Today there are so many chiefs and so much mischief that nobody knows who is responsible and nobody seems to care.
Police guarding their stations from terrorist attacks often do not go out even on routine police work. Undoubtedly they are hard pressed. The CID is today overworked on hounding pressmen and political opponents of the Government than on the traditional offender. But the whole tradition of the policemen being a friend in need for the people is crumbling. There is widespread talk that the police and the underworld often work together and are as thick as thieves. That talk may be exaggerated but there also could be some truth in it. If such an impression is to be erased the police would need to act much more effectively and much more impartially than they are doing now.
With H.D. Deve Gowda's United Front government consolidating itself in India, fresh winds are blowing across the whole subcontinent ushering in fresh hope for South Asian regional cooperation. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for SAARC in recent years has been the age old and still growing rivalry between India and Pakistan mainly over the Kashmir crisis. With the conflict now in its fourth decade, Kashmir is regarded as one of the if not the world's most dangerous trouble spots with India and Pakistan both apparently racing towards nuclear weapons.
In this scenario, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Sardar Aseff Ahmed Ali during his recent visit to Colombo made a very significant request for Sri Lanka to use its good offices in settling the Kashmir dispute. On the face of it it's some kudos for Sri Lanka to be invited to use its influence in settling such a longstanding dispute between our two big neighbours. Not since Vietnam wanted our then President J.R. Jayewardene to use his good offices (which he declined) to settle a dispute with China, has Sri Lanka been asked to sort out a bilateral dispute.
But the Pakistan Foreign Minister in going public with the request to Sri Lanka at a news conference has caused some concern as to whether this is merely a calculated diplomatic ploy to show the Pakistanis to be the good guys. Such a request, usually, is first made discreetly or informally and only announced when the country concerned accepts the role and with the concurrence of that country.
Diplomats cite the secret talks in Oslo, Norway between Israel and the PLO as talks that were meant to succeed.
Sri Lanka has not been asked to mediate at this stage, only to use its good offices - something like a messenger or go-between for the present.
India at times has appeared to be jittery as it would be isolated from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation where all its small neighbours in a sense gang up against New Delhi. But on the other hand, India would surely want the Kashmir dispute settled. Such a settlement would bring peace to the region; something that would be in its own interest for the economic take-off that India's hundreds of millions of her people will surely want.
Sri Lanka must not look the other way to this invitation by at least one of the sides in the Kashmir dispute. Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar has been a commercial arbitrator in his law practice days. He has the credentials to fit into the role of a diplomatic arbitrator now.
Go to the Political Column