Saturday Apr 20, 2024
Saturday Apr 20, 2024
Wednesday, 8 April 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
One of the great expectations of a good-governance-touting administration was that it would bring a whole cabal of lawbreakers of yesteryear to book. But a closer scrutiny of the coalition government’s erstwhile election manifesto reveals that the fine print was not as specific on the details as one would have wished or wanted. In that sense, the latest trend has the welcome flavour of delivering more than was promised.
Some of the arrests and their attendant developments – or, the lack of these – were high profile enough to evince wide interest.
First there was the arrest of three Navy personnel suspected of assassinating TNA MP Nadarajah Raviraj. The outspoken Tamil legislator was said by the previous regime to have been gunned down by the LTTE in 2006 at the height of the civil war, with the then government’s critics implicating those powers that were. This ‘arresting development’ – against the backdrop of the Rajapaksa government being accused of fielding paramilitary groups to abduct and assassinate dissidents – could be interpreted as the Sirisena administration making a breakthrough in the much vaunted investigations into war-time abuses of power, extrajudicial killings, and miscarriages of justice.
Then there was a flurry of activity around the Duminda Silva case. The Attorney General filed indictments against 13 suspects – including the UPFA MP – on 3 March, on 17 charges to do with the Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra killing in internecine warfare in 2011. When the case was called before the Colombo High Court two weeks later, the judge ordered the suspects to be produced in court on 1 April. And a fortnight later, the same court released the parliamentarian and his fellow suspects under strict condition of bail in addition to impounding their passports.
But the Police and associated law-enforcement authorities have yet to make a breakthrough in the assassination of the maverick Editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge, despite assurances and pledges that no efforts are being spared to identify and indict the killers and those issuing the orders for the hit to be carried out.
Look back in anger
Premachandra’s killing took place on 8 October 2011. Today, 8 April, there seems to be some movement some three and a half years later towards identifying and investigating his assassins, with a view to justice being done. Raviraj’s gunning down was on 10 November 2006. Today, eight years and five months after the killing, at least the killers – if not their commanders – have been collared. Wickrematunge’s ‘hit’ (and run) goes back to 8 January 2009. Today, six years and three months later to the date, his assassination remains a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
Today, 8 April, is three months since the incumbent administration assumed the mantle of (good) governance. While it has made a few precious breakthroughs – or precious few breakthroughs, depending on your perspective and temperament – there remains a litany of wrongdoings unaddressed and unresolved. Need I list out the roll-call of names of those abducted, assassinated, and missing in action?
Maybe it is more than unfair – it might even be unrealistic – to carp and cavil in unappreciative fashion about what has been done of what had been promised. Order, and the rule of law, and a return to the rule of law and order – rather than rule by law (a selective application of civil and criminal procedure) – remain a high priority of this government. So, today, 8 April, is a good day on which to look back – though some may do so in anger, apathy, or ignorance – at what has been done in the light of what was promised when the then government-in-waiting implied that yahapalanaya (‘good governance’) meant that justice would be meted out and those who were wronged would be served.
Investigations into abductions and assassinations aside, there was also another ‘arresting development’ – the news that former Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa was issued notice to appear before the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID). Under Section 124 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the former political strongman is to make a statement to the FCID on 24 April – an eventuality virtually unheard of under the previous political dispensation. Although this is hardly an ‘arrest’, it is an unprecedented ‘development’.
Even if nothing ever comes of it, the idea that erstwhile high officials can and must be held accountable is a salutary one, if it is taken at face value – and one dispenses with the timing, the exceptions to the rule, and the circumstances under which the former minister – free to come and go, per his attorney – will come… and go. Either way, the issue at hand – an allegation that the ex-minister in charge of the then government’s ‘Divi Neguma’ project ordered that funds from this project be invested in his brother, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s, election campaign – is open to serious and sincere investigation. That, in and of itself, is an ‘arresting development’.
This is not the only progress being made, and being seen to be made. Other strongmen – and henchmen in high places – of and under the previous regime are also being called upon, hauled in, hauled over the coals.
There are at least four perspectives from which one can view these ‘arresting developments’:
Naïve
The government is sincere about its promises and serious about making law and order a matter of priority. But it is facing unexpected difficulties in delivering on its implicit manifesto. This is the charitable view.
Pragmatic
The government is doing the best that it can, under the circumstances. Some arrests are opportune – they simply happened as part of the process of investigation. Others are opportunistic – they surely needed to happen as part of the politics of intimidation. This point of view sees the powers that be steadfastly doing what is necessary to be sincere about delivering on its promises; to be serious about doing what is necessary to stay convincingly in control.
Strategic
The government is picking and choosing which cases to pursue and which to soft-pedal. This perspective comes in a variety of intensities. The ‘soft’ strategic view is it has to pick which cases are politically expedient to send out a message of both seriousness and sincerity. The ‘hard’ strategic view is that it has to choose which cases to pursue to stymie the opposition, while sending out messages of strength and strategic savvy that will intimidate its opponents. From this perspective, it appears that no one knows which case will experience a breakthrough next. Also from this perspective, it is evident that everyone knows which cases will never get cracked.
Subversive
This is the most cynical point of view. On the lips of the government’s detractors – and there are many of them, thanks to the culture of dissent that has been encouraged and endured – it has the powers that be being neither sincere nor serious about ensuring that justice is done as far as past misdeeds, murder, and mayhem go. The subversive view is that no government can afford to muckrake or investigate too closely or keenly – for there is no knowing where the bodies are. Such a view sees governments being manipulative in deciding timeframes for opening up old wounds, and convenient frameworks for disposing of the inconvenient skeletons in the closet. Cynical though it may be, there is more than a smidgen of cliché in the thinking that all governments – especially coalition governments then, and national unity governments now – are complicit in some degree of criminality against their citizens. By design or default? The mind boggles! However, facts and findings (or lack thereof) are stubborn, and comment or opinion sacred…
Be these positions as they may, a superficial reading of the situation brings to mind several truisms. And at least one home truth. These clichés span the gamut from “justice delayed is justice denied” to “justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done”. There is also the truth which must come home to roost sooner than later – for the sake of good governance undertaken and under-delivered – that “justice must not be said to be done, but done”.
To be utterly and entirely fair, there is a plethora of excuses or reasons that can be offered in defence of the 90-day administration. And to be quite objective about the exercise of good governance thus far, a panoply of rationalisations and exemptions have been trotted out. That they are doing their best. That they can’t undo what has taken years for others to do and left undone. That they lack the time, resources, and political goodwill and public cooperation to book the culprits. But the common or garden riposte of the genuinely interested – and by now irate – republican citizen might well be, “well, you could and should have known better than to promise, then”. This is realpolitik at its best… or worst.
Order, and the rule of law, and a return to the rule of law and order remain a high priority of the government (as it avows) and civil society (as it aspires). In this context, one can only hope that the powers that be are being naïve at best, and pragmatic at worst. To entertain even the notion that they are being strategic or subversive is not a pleasant prospect, nor a consummation devoutly to be wished. If there is one wish that is devoutly to be consummated, it is that government will use the last 10 days or so of its stint to clarify and communicate the state of investigations into the past… so that we the people, and they our elected and appointed government, may step with more confidence into a somewhat clouded over future.
