Malady of SL’s politics of settling scores

The Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court this week rejected a bail application filed by Sugeeshwara Bandara, the former personal secretary to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is in remand custody over allegations of criminal misappropriation and criminal breach of trust involving more than Rs. 220 million.

He is alleged to have received two salaries under the expenditure head of the President while serving as a secretary to the former President in 2022 and also working as a Project Director at the Presidential Secretariat during the period when former President Ranil Wickremesinghe held office. Having been arrested on 18 June  this year, he has had several bail applications denied, and this week had his detention extended till 7 October.

To grant bail or not is the prerogative of the magistrate/judge, but there is a question over the way different standards are applied to different persons when bail hearings are held.

That said, it is timely to look at the charges often thrown at Government investigating agencies such as the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and other units in the police, which are perceived as catering to the whims of those in power. This begs the question of whether some suspects are being granted bail more easily due to certain connections while others are made to languish in jail, when the cases against them can easily continue while they are out on bail, as they pose no threat to society and are in no position to influence witnesses, tamper with evidence, etc.

Take the case of Sugeeshwara Bandara. If it is found he acted contrary to the law, there is no argument that he should face the punishment handed down to him by the courts, but let’s take a closer look at the malady of political revenge that ails this country.

In April 1989, when Sugeeshwara Bandara was four years old, his father, a lawyer and acting magistrate and a prominent member of the Communist Party of Sri Lanka in the Southern Province, was shot dead by members of the JVP. It was the period when the JVP revolt to overthrow the Government was in full swing, during 1988-90, with politicians of almost all political parties, including the UNP, SLFP and CP, being silenced by the gun.

He is not the only one who has had to undergo the childhood trauma of seeing a parent shot dead in before their eyes; others, including some in the JVP who are in Government today, have also had to face such trauma due to the brutality of the State’s response to the violence unleashed by the JVP. For those who have been personally impacted, the fight is not only political but also personal, and there will be attempts to settle old scores in the guise of securing justice.

It’s been a pattern in Sri Lanka’s political landscape to extract revenge from predecessors. The UNP, which won a landslide victory in the 1977 general elections, took this to a new level when Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who was Prime Minister before the UNP came to power, was stripped of her civic rights by the J.R. Jayewardene Government over abuse of power allegations. Along with her, many others faced the wrath of the UNP. When Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected President in 1994, she did her part by appointing commissions to get back at her political opponents. Sarath Fonseka faced trumped-up charges and was jailed only because he dared to contest against Mahinda Rajapaksa in the 2010 presidential election, and when the Maithripala Sirisena Government took office, the pattern continued. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, during his brief tenure, did his bit to take the pattern forward, and for the ruling NPP too, the main focus has been on fixing political opponents on various charges. Some certainly warrant investigation, but some are being pursued only to satisfy individuals or groups of its supporters who came in handy during elections.

It’s likely this pattern will continue for the next three years the NPP has been elected for as well, with the NPP Government having made ‘jailing thieves’, as they put it, its main slogan, and hoping this quenches the thirst to get even of a section of their supporters.

It’s the misfortune of this country that it has not produced statesmen/women as its leaders, but only those with fragile egos who are satisfied seeing their political opponents ridiculed and demeaned. This has become a vicious circle which will continue even when the NPP is out of power. The faces will change, but the theatrics will continue, and the pattern of revenge will continue.