Professional Codes,Rule of Law and Political Sycophancy

by Shanie

"To be young and alive in Peradeniya in the ‘fifties and even the ‘sixties was to taste the heady wine of academic freedom and the intoxicating vigour of dialectical discourse, unhampered alike by the cramping confines of political sycophancy and the debilitating pressures of an academic mafia moving in malevolent ways its backstairs intrigues to perform. It was still a place for the independent and disinterested study of economic virtues and vices, and the fearless scrutiny of the prevailing values and orientations of society. It was a democracy which thrived on dissent, and made no pretence of its responsibility to produce critics and consciences of society to give leadership in ideas."

(June 04, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The late Ian Goonetileke was a former University Librarian at Peradeniya and an internationally respected bibliographer. He wrote the above in 1981 as part of a tribute on the death of Professor H A de S Gunasekera, Professor of Economics at Peradeniya for many years and for a brief period, Secretary to the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs. What Ian Goonetileke saw, in his typically flamboyant prose, as the heady wine of academic freedom and the intoxicating vigour of dialectical discourse has been and is being gradually snatched away from the academics not only by the politicians but, more sickeningly, by their sycophants in the Senate Houses of the Universities. We have to be thankful there still are some brave academics who want to ensure that our universities remains democracies thriving on dissent and make no pretence of their responsibility to produce critics and consciences of society, men and women who will give leadership to ideas.

It is little understood by the practitioners that political sycophancy, whether in the universities or outside, provides only short-term benefits to those who engage in it but long-term ill effects both to the respective institution and to the practitioners themselves. As Romesh de Silva, the eminent President’s Counsel, recently stated: "Sri Lankan society is full of sycophants and opportunists. People even in the highest positions prostitute themselves and sell their souls not even for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver but for a mere half piece of enamel."

Earlier this week, there was a lecture-discussion at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies where Silan Kadirgamar, then an academic at the University of Jaffna and a leading figure in the Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality headed by Fr Paul Caspersz, spoke on the thirtieth anniversary of the burning of the Jaffna Public Library. During discussion time, several speakers condemned the role played by a Senior DIG at that time, saying that it was he who had brought indisciplined policemen and given orders for the havoc and mayhem to be created in Jaffna at that time. But there were two among the discussants, one a UPFA parliamentarian and the other a leader of a small Left political party, who, while not defending the said DIG, stated that the DIG would not have given the illegal orders to burn and destroy unless he had received orders in turn from his political masters. The audience seemed to accept this as the reality. Yes, in today’s context. it requires a brave professional, among the law-enforcement officers, university administrators or public servants, who will defy an order and tell his/her political masters that the order cannot carried out because it is against his/her professional code and/or the law of the land.

The shootings at FTZ workers

This seems to have the dilemma faced by the Katunayake and Negombo Police officers during this week’s confrontation with the demonstrating Free Trade Zone workers. It was more than excessive force that was used to break up the demonstration – live bullets have been used resulting in the death of a young worker and injuries to scores of others. Under normal circumstances, live ammunition is not used to disperse demonstrations of this nature. Even if an emergency situation were to arise, a warning is usually issued, and shots are first fired into the air. There is no indication that this was done in this instance. But it seems highly unlikely that the local Police would have acted on their own. As in the case of the burning of the Public library and other acts of arson in 1981, the people who carry out the orders, illegal and otherwise, end up as the scapegoats. Two Inspectors of Police have been remanded and the Inspector-General of Police himself has gone on pre-mature retirement. Persons who probably gave the unconscionable orders will continue to occupy their political positions. Sycophants must beware that they will end up with more than mud in their faces when they become an embarrassment to their political masters.

President Rajapaksa issued a public statement offering to send the dying young worker abroad for medical treatment. As a former defender of the human rights of workers, we have no doubt he was sincere in his offer. But the local medics were doing their best and there was no request from them that foreign medical assistance was required. So obviously President Rajapaksa’s offer, though sincere, was motivated by a desire to salve his political conscience. There have been several political set-backs for him in the recent past. The fiasco over the building of an air platform in the Negombo lagoon and now over the Private sector pension plan, the expulsion of the urban poor to distant places, the ever escalating costs of living, the heavy-handedness in dealing with the legitimate trade union demands of workers and university academics and the lack of any real progress in providing housing and livelihood support to the re-settled internally displaced are the some of the issues that will lead to growing disenchantment with his government and the style of management of some of his ministers and others close to him. Continuing celebrations of the victory over the LTTE will, in the longer term, not pull him back from these political set-backs. Sooner rather than later, the public will get tired of patriotic rhetoric as a panacea for their economic and social woes.

Change of Course Needed

President Rajapaksa’s government needs a change of direction. Democracy and good governance, as Ian Goonetileke said, will thrive only on dissent, not on sycophancy. The governance, instead of stifling dissent from journalists and others, must encourage constructive criticism. Even if the critics are not always constructive, they are certainly preferable to sycophants and flatterers who will only be shielding their political masters from knowing and facing reality.

21 year-old Roshan Chanaka, the young FTZ worker, is not the first martyr to police firing in the course of trace union action. Political historians will remember the famous Mooloya incident in 1940 where Govindan was shot and killed by police firing during a workers’ strike in Mooloya estate in Hewaheta. Incidentally, Govindan was not one of the striking workers but a factory officer walking back alone after work. A trigger-happy police sergeant was obeying orders to shoot at any worker. That was during the British colonial era. Those were also the heady days of LSSP activism and at the insistence of Philip Gunawardene and N M Perera, the State Council demanded and had a Commission of Inquiry appointed. The Commission held that the shooting was unjustified though the colonial government took no further action, neither to prosecute the police sergeant nor to probe further as to who had authorised the shoot-to-kill orders.

Since the Mooloya incident, there have been other assaults on trade union demonstrators. During the General Strike of 1947, police action resulted in the killing of public servant Kandasamy at Dematagoda Junction. In reminiscing about that strike, the late T B Dissanayake, a former President of the GCSU, in a newspaper article quoted S W R D Bandaranaike: "The shot that killed Kandasamy sounded the death knell of British imperialism!" Indeed, such heavy-handed responses, not only shoot-to-kill orders, can and will have clear long-term repercussions. More recently, the J. R. Jayewardene government, elected with a massive majority in 1977, used heavy-handed methods to deal with trade unionists, indeed with anyone who dared to cross its path. Today, that government is remembered only for such evil deeds not for any good it did.

The government will be making a mistake if it does not allow the family of young Roshan Chanaka to conduct his funeral in the way they want. If the family wants to make that a political event, so be it. No member of the government or anyone else has a right to dictate to the family as to how they should handle this personal tragedy. Worse would be if any extra-judicial force was used to enforce conformity. The death of this young worker as a result of firing by the state law enforcement officers was a tragedy. It will be a worse tragedy if the state were to interfere with the family’s funeral plans. It will lead the public to believe that the state condones the firing, or worse, to conjecture that the orders to shoot came from people wielding state power. It will be in the interests of the government to ensure that it is represented at the funeral by some senior figures; and that support and protection is given to the family to conduct the funeral in the way they desire, even if it is used for anti-government sentiments. By doing so, President Rajapakse would have stooped to conquer.

Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as government of the people, by the people and for the people. It meant that all citizens - rich or poor, majority or minority, man or woman – who constituted society had equal rights and equal duties. Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s founder President until his voluntary retirement in 1986, refined Lincoln’s definition, by saying that democracy required security of life and liberty. It requires the general acceptance of an enforceable rule of law. To ordinary peasants and workers, he said, almost any system of law-enforcement is better than none. The rule of law has to be the servant, not the master of justice. It must be enforced equally against rich and poor, and against the educated and the less-educated, by an independent judiciary not subject to arbitrary dismissal nor the vagaries of an electoral system.

Nyerere went on to add: "Ultimately, only a just political system, with just laws, is sustainable. Men and women will always rebel against intolerable oppression whenever the opportunity occurs."