Some presidents do end up in jail

The Maldives criminal court this week sentenced former President Abdulla Yameen to 11 years in prison and fined him $ 5 million after finding him guilty of corruption and money laundering charges related to receiving kickbacks from a private company. Yameen lost power in 2018 and in 2019 he was sentenced to five years in jail and fined $ 5 million in 2019 for embezzling $ 1 million in state funds, which the prosecution said was acquired through the lease of resort development rights. However, he was released in 2020.

Yameen joins a list of former leaders who have faced justice in recent days for crimes committed during the height of their power. This month Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison and a lifetime ban from holding public office for a fraud scheme that embezzled $ 1 billion through public works projects during her presidency. Peru’s President Pedro Castillo, was removed from office this week and detained on charges of “rebellion” after he announced he would shutter congress and install a “Government of exception” – just hours before he was due to face an impeachment vote.

In Mozambique, the son of a former President was sentenced to 12 years in prison after being found guilty, along with 10 other people, on charges related to a corruption scandal in which the Government concealed large debts, crashing the country’s economy.

In August this year Malaysian ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak began a 12-year prison sentence after losing his final appeal in a corruption case linked to the looting of the 1MDB state fund, with the country’s top court unanimously upholding his conviction and sentence. The 69-year-old former premier was found guilty by a lower court in July 2020 of criminal breach of trust, abuse of power, and money laundering for illegally receiving about $ 10 million from SRC International, a former unit of the government-run 1MDB fund. He had been out on bail and pending appeals.

The aberration of this story is in Sri Lanka, where leaders who are responsible for blatant, outright corruption, continue in positions of power with impunity. The fundamental reason for this is a failed judiciary and an incompetent judicial system that has become an appendage of the executive rather than an independent branch of the State. In Sri Lanka the whole judicial system, including the Police, the Attorney General’s Department, and the courts, has failed miserably to hold those in power accountable for numerous crimes including financial crimes. When such concerns are pointed out the judiciary often resorts to the draconian, anti-democratic and archaic laws on contempt of court, which is not defined by an Act of Parliament in Sri Lanka, to intimidate those who criticise.

It is unclear how the political fortunes of former president Abdulla Yameen will span out in the coming months and years. Numerous political machinations resulting in numerous political alignments have occurred since October 2008 when the country held free and fair elections based on the 2007 constitution that ended the 30-year rule of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. As Sri Lankan people have witnessed in recent years, even the most corrupt and despised leaders can make astonishing comebacks into political high office.

Yet, the conviction of Yameen by a competent court holds the young democracy in the Indian Ocean in good stead. It is definitely a far better accomplishment than anything Sri Lanka can claim.