Convenient bogeys and the real fear

“Whatever may be to the credit of the government for having defeated the LTTE, and credit must undoubtedly be given for this, surely it is time that we wake up to the reality that this country is teetering towards one-party authoritarianism with its inevitably underlying dismissal of the Rule of Law and the Constitution?”
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By Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena

(October 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Some months back, these column spaces carried a reflection titled ‘Why is the Government so terrified of the 17th Amendment (to the Constitution)?”

In this purportedly ‘post-conflict’ stage and in a context where the Rajapakse administration does not need really to demonstrate that it has overwhelming public support, this pithy question carries more relevance than ever. What has the government to fear from an independent Police Commission or an Elections Commission if it can carry the vote of the people so easily? This question deserves to be asked time and time again, unrelentingly as it were, for the disregarding of this constitutional amendment increasingly portends far more than what is seen on the surface.

What of the Elections Commission?

Whatever the electoral results that may emerge over the weekend in the South, this is an election that should have been conducted under the watch of an Elections Commission, the members of which should have been appointed by the Constitutional Council. The authority exerted by the Elections Commissioner, is both in theory and in practice, faltering. At one point, we had the incumbent continually pleading that he be allowed to step down from his post, including famously at the conclusion of the 2005 Presidential polls where he addressed a direct – and later disregarded - appeal to the victorious candidate, now the current President. He has also pointed to various lacunae in the election laws that ought to be remedied in order to strengthen his hand in the minimum. These reforms still remain pending. His pleas that he be released meanwhile appear to have faded away probably due to the conviction that they will have little effect anyway. This situation is incongruous indeed.

Negation of an unparalleled constitutional experiment

But more than any other constitutional commission, it is the National Police Commission that ought to be restored, not only to ensure that the police act properly during election times but also to protect law abiding police officers themselves from being transferred out due to the whims and fancies of enraged politicians who find that these police officers do not jump to obey when the whip is cracked. Undoubtedly it was this Commission’s attempts to bring order back into the police service during its first term, (notwithstanding some initial blundering on its part), which pricked politicians into realising the extent of what they themselves had unwittingly perhaps agreed to. The gradual – and successful – destabilizing of the 17th Amendment was an inevitable result thereafter. It was not a largely toothless National Human Rights Commission or even the Public Service Commission which created disquiet in government ranks.

Rather it was the Police Commission which had been given constitutional and regulatory powers that were unparalleled in the whole of Asia. This was a novel constitutional experiment which, if worked properly, may have been an exemplary lesson for the region. Unfortunately, it was not to be. So we continue to have the Angulana incident, the Nipuna incident and countless others concerning victims who are not fortunate enough (perversely as it were) to make it to the front pages of the country’s newspapers. Killings of unarmed suspects in police custody, most disturbingly applauded by sections of the public, still continue.

If, as is sometimes contended, internal disciplinary measures put into place by the Inspector General of Police have been sufficient to contain this problem, we certainly see no hard evidence of this. The Police Commission may not have been a miracle cure. However, with some careful and sensitive finetuning, this constitutional mechanism may have redressed some of the more serious problems currently affecting our law enforcement processes.

Political dysfunction on the 17th Amendment

But this is not to say that such devilment in regard to the 17th Amendment is the sole preserve of the Rajapakse administration. The main opposition party, the United National Party itself dragged its feet on the 17th Amendment with only one or two solitary voices to the contrary. On its own part, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna also deviated from its initial commendatory stand of forging a political consensus on the 17th Amendment to follow a policy of deafening silence in later years. It is only now – quite belatedly- that both parties have woken up to the signal importance of this constitutional amendment, definitively for their own political gains rather than due to an overwhelming commitment towards good governance.

Exposing of the ‘bogeyman’

Let us make no mistake about this. The subversion of our governance processes cannot be hidden any longer under the convenient bogey of the ‘virtual’ reawakening of the LTTE, the uproariously silly Channel 4 episode touted by a group of journalists whose credentials are dubious or the equally uproarious notion that the entirety of the West is conspiring against us, though propagandists may try to tell us so. We do not need the European Commission to tell us that our constitutional systems are not being worked properly. This we know for ourselves. We also know when we are sought to be intimidated, (spectacularly unsuccessfully as this may be), by those who delight in doing hatchet jobs in the belief that this would please their political masters. These are dangerous tactics for they spur natural and extreme anger with little regard for consequences.

Whatever may be to the credit of the government for having defeated the LTTE, and credit must undoubtedly be given for this, surely it is time that we wake up to the reality that this country is teetering towards one-party authoritarianism with its inevitably underlying dismissal of the Rule of Law and the Constitution? We may have experienced this before in past decades but each time has left us more depleted than ever, in terms of our national unity and collective progress.

Do we really have to go through this all over again?

-Sri Lanka Guardian