Editorial

27th September 1998

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Who takes the blame?

The saga over the arrest of High Court Judge Mahanama Tille- keratne continues to capture the attention of the news coverage this week. Given the issues, the personalities and the important arms of the law and justice involved, it also deserves public scrutiny and debate. A few days ago CID Chief Punya de Silva got a resounding snub from as many as 130 senior police officers, when a resolution he pushed to condemn the judge boomeranged into a stunning vote of no-confidence on the CID in general and the CID Chief in particular. What a shame! If there was need for a legal branch in the Police Department or for the Attorney General to represent former CID Director Bandula "show" Wickremasinghe in the contempt case, then the IGP could have written to the President. What was the need to draw the whole Police top brass into it? Was it a move to bring about a battle between the Police and lawyers, as seen during the Wijedasa Liyanarachchi case?

The conduct or misconduct of the CID in recent years has been a sorry feature of the police. In years gone by, the very mention of the words "The CID has been called in", aroused both excitement and hope that a crime was about to be solved and the culprits brought to justice. That department then had the reputation for being the ultimate in police detective work reserved for the unravelling of big crimes of the day. The brains went into that department and the brawn elsewhere. Times have changed. Today, the CID has gone to the dogs and even VVIPs have only sneers for it and refer to its top brass as "loyal buffaloes".

Who then is to blame for this parlous state of affairs? Blame no doubt can be firmly laid on the ruling politicians who are surely responsible for righting wrongs and then squarely the blame lies on the shoulders of the policemen themselves who wish to climb not the ladder of seniority but move atop an escalator to propel themselves to dizzying heights at top speed, only to find themselves overwhelmed by tasks they are unfamiliar with. So they fall with a bang if not with a whimper.

The CID as a department is in our view per se not to blame. They have been regrettably made use of as appendages of the ruling party. For too long. People have been harassed for little or no other reason than for their dissent with the ruling party.

Then on the other hand there are those who have got away with murder on the fiat of their political masters, while ordinary crimes go by the board since an overburdened CID is unable to cope or give such crimes the attention they deserve. This is because the officers have to deal with file on file in respect of perceived enemies of the State.

The CID has become a national tragedy and the sooner an independent Police Commission is set up, the better for Sir Lanka.

The redeeming feature in this repulsive story is the fact that the peers of the CID boss are not prepared to consort with him and march to the beat of the same drum.

They clearly demonstrated this when they overwhelmingly rejected a call by the CID chief to justify what, prima facie, appears to be the illegal arrest of a sitting judge.

What the police delivered in clear terms last Thursday was the message that the CID is not the police and that the police service still is an honourable profession. So then, there is hope still, All is not lost.

Political Column

Editorial/Opinion Contents