A knot in Dr. Jayatilleka’s theory

By Shivanthi Ranasinghe

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, in his ‘The President’s shock and awe 20th Amendment’ did not spare his pen to paint the most ominous vision he can make of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. That is of course Dr. Jayatilleka’s prerogative. However, his analysis over Premier Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Committee Report is worthy of further scrutiny. 

Dr. Jayatilleka claims that, “Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ‘Committee Report’ initiative was trying to save him (President Gotabaya) and the Government from: the over-accumulation of power at the very top, which soon turns the Presidency into a much bigger and singular political target, socially, nationally and internationally ... the more diffuse the distribution of power in a system, the more responsibility is institutionally shared, the less of a target the person at the top is, and conversely, that the more power is concentrated in the person at the top, the more he/she is responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong and becomes a magnet for discontent, making the government and the entire system (not to mention the ruling family) vulnerable.”

This analysis is morally irritating and factually incorrect. 

A definite and not a diffused system is the need of the hour

Dr. Jayatilleka asserts that by distributing power within the system, so does the responsibility. Thereby, if something “goes wrong” the blame gets distributed. In effect, the public might never be able to pinpoint the responsibility on a particular person or entity. 

This would be a déjà vu of the current proceedings taking place in the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) into the Easter attacks. The then Head of State Intelligence Service Senior Deputy IGP Nilantha Jayawardena claims he passed on the information regarding the impending attacks to both the then Chief of National Intelligence Sisira Mendis and the then Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando. 

Sisira Mendis claims that Nilantha Jayawardena was the boss of his own institute and thus did not need a directive from Mendis. Nilantha Jayawardena claims he is only the informant of the State and it is not his job to take action. 

Hemasiri Fernando claims the reports from Nilantha Jayawardena were too basic for his interpretation and were more suitable for ground level officers. In any case, Jayawardena enjoyed a “father-son” like relationship with the then President Maithripala Sirisena, claimed Fernando. Therefore, he does not believe that Jayawardena did not share the relevant reports with President Sirisena. Either way, as far as Hemasiri Fernando is concerned, he instructed the then IGP Pujith Jayasundera to be informed and when he checked with the IGP, he was in the process of informing his deputies. 

In the coming days, we will no doubt hear more incredulous stories from the former IGP as well. As it is, he is in the process of offloading his woes to the PCoI as to the step-fatherly treatment he received at the hands of the allegedly wicked President Sirisena, who even forbade him from the Security Council meetings. 

And so the blame is passed around as if in pass-the-parcel. The shameless passing the buck by these grown men at the height of their careers must be excruciating to the Easter attack victims and their families. For the rest of us, these proceedings are simply unbelievable. 

Therefore, never again should Sri Lanka have a system where the responsibility is “diffused”. We need a system that has a clear cut chain of command and each officer must know his responsibilities with the respective course of action needed to be taken. 

To be fair by Dr. Jayatilleka, he neither advocates nor opposes such a system where the responsibility no longer lies with the Head, but is “institutionally shared”. He simply assumes this to be the purpose of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ‘Committee Report’. 

Yet, the Prime Minister had never publicly articulated that his intention was to save President Gotabaya from the President’s and his inner circle’s political immaturity, as Dr. Jayatilleka claims. Given the weak relationship Dr. Jayatilleka currently enjoys with the Rajapaksa family, it is highly doubtful that Prime Minister confided his motive for the Committee Report with Dr. Jayatilleka. Therefore, this whole summation by Dr. Jayatilleka is simply a huge assumption on his part. 

Assumption or not, a system that saves the Head from “anything and everything that goes wrong and becomes a magnet for discontent” is both immoral and amoral. It is indeed a pity that a seasoned political analyst such as Dr. Jayatilleka did not have enough ink in his pen to note it as such in his long analysis in which he had nit picked on many matters. 

In any case, Dr. Jayatilleka (perhaps inadvertently) had endorsed the President’s apparent decision to withdraw the space he gave his camp to critically review the Amendment. If Dr. Jayatilleka’s assumption is correct, then President Gotabaya had prevented in creating an Amendment that sought to obscure responsibility just so as to protect the “the Government and the entire system (not to mention the ruling family)” from becoming “vulnerable”. 

The blame is passed around as if in pass-the-parcel. The shameless passing the buck by these grown men at the height of their careers must be excruciating to the Easter attack victims and their families. For the rest of us, these proceedings are simply unbelievable. Therefore, never again should Sri Lanka have a system where the responsibility is “diffused”. We need a system that has a clear cut chain of command and each officer must know his responsibilities with the respective course of action needed to be taken

Can a diffused system save the head?

The Opposition’s tantrum over the 20th Amendment is to protect the 19th Amendment – or at the very least, parts of it. They claim that the latter is a pillar of democracy. It is being argued that the 19th Amendment ensures that power is not concentrated in one source but provides the necessary checks and balances to prevent the Head from acting arbitrarily. 

The defenders are deeply concerned over the fate of the independent commissions. The fact that the independent Police Commission could neither prevent the Easter attacks nor hold any officer responsible for the failure is being conveniently ignored by those who are tearing over these commissions. 

So far, the Police Commission has not been held answerable for the Easter fiasco, which was preventable. Observing the PCoI proceedings, we see an entire line of top officers – from Ministry of Defence to Intelligence hierarchy to the Police – sitting in a circle as it were, pointing fingers at each other. The laymen are getting thoroughly confused as to who was at fault or the point at which the system failed. Yet, the recurring theme throughout the testimonies is the role played by the then President Maithripala Sirisena. 

It is not clear at this point whether Maithripala Sirisena actually knew or even had an inkling of the attacks beforehand. However, it is very clear that he is the responsible party for the system to fail. According to testimonies, the then President had not wanted either of the Prime Ministers – Ranil Wickremesinghe or Mahinda Rajapaksa – to be included in the Security Council meetings.

After Ranil Wickremesinghe was reinstated into premiership after the 52-day Government topsy-turvy, Pujith Jayasundera recalls that as officers they were caught between the deeply soured relationship between the then President and his Premier. He often faced conflicting orders from the two parties, Jayasundera told the PCoI. In such situations, he followed the President’s directive and not the Premier’s, he said. 

It was not only with Ranil Wickremesinghe the then President had a problem. According to the testimonies made at the PCoI, Maithripala Sirisena had not been in good terms with either his IGP or his Defence Secretary at the time of the Easter Attack. According to Hemasiri, his parting words to the President just before handing over his resignation were to allow the succeeding Defence Secretary at least 10 minutes of the President’s time. 

The Commission inquired from Hemasiri Fernando as to the reasons he did not approach either the Prime Minister or the State Minister for Defence when he could not get through to the President. His answer was that the President forbade the senior officers any meetings with either of the two politicians. 

Therefore, it is very clear that whatever the power sharing there might be between the President and his Premier or Parliament, in a presidential system, the ultimate power and thus responsibility lies with the President. Unless there is a complete overhaul of the present Constitution and we revert to the Parliamentary system, the President will always be answerable – whether he is directly involved or not. 

(The writer can be reached via [email protected])