How do you solve a problem like Vijayakala?
The quandary that faces the AG
The daggers are drawn for Vijayakala’s blood. After the UNP MP’s controversial speech at the ‘Nila Mehewera’ ceremony held in Jaffna this Tuesday when she called ‘from the bottom of my heart for the resurrection of the Tamil Tigers” and declared that ‘our main objective is to resurrect the LTTE in North and East in order to ensure our survival’ it was clear that she had shut the door on her own political position as the State Minister of Women and Child Affairs in the National Government.
It was politically embarrassing and politically lethal for both President Sirisena who had appointed her as State Minister and even worse for the Prime Minister Wickremesinghe in whose party she is a member.
Whilst the Speaker of the House took grave offence and referred the matter to the Attorney General to pursue the matter, Ranil Wickremesinghe opted to appoint a committee to inquire into the matter.
In the meantime, the Tigerembracing State Minister for Child Affairs, Vijayakala Maheswaran resigned from her portfolio. But funnily enough it was to be a sort of suspended sentence only – till the committee inquired into the matter. The question on the public lip is does a committee have to be appointed when all of Lanka heard Vijayakala’s call for the resurrection of the LTTE through the electronic media?
In Catholic terms her comments would have amounted to blasphemy which, in the days of old would have caused her to be burnt at the stake as a witch. Thankfully we live in civilised times. Where we go by the rule book and bring the repulsive offender to the bar of court and, if found guilty, throw him or her behind bars to merely sweat out the sentence in jail.
In a statement published on Wednesday, the Speaker’s office said it had asked the Attorney General what action should be taken against the State Minister Maheswaran statement. Several MPs had raised the same question and stated that the Deputy Minister’s statement amounted to a violation of the Constitution.
But the question that must perplex the Attorney General’s legal brain this Sunday morn is whether, devoid of the emotion surrounding her speech, Vijayakala had in anyway violated the Constitution. Had she transgressed the oath of allegiance prescribed in the Sixth Amendment she took as an MP of Parliament?
Article 157 of the constitution states: No person shall, directly or indirectly, in or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka.
It is reflected in the 6th Amendment which demands that every person who is elected to parliament shall take the following oath:
“I do solemnly declare and affirm swear that I will uphold and defend ‘the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and that I will not, directly or indirectly, in or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka.”
This is applicable to every member of, or person in the service of, a local authority, Development Council, Pradeshiya Mandalaya, Gramodaya Mandalaya or public corporation and, every Attorney-at-Law .
The question is, did Vijayakala transgress her oath by calling for the return of the LTTE.
On the face of it, no. She did not “support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka.” To play the Devil’s Advocate, all she called for was for the LTTE umbrella to give the Jaffna people protection. True that the LTTE had once advocated the division of the country but the LTTE had ceased to be since 2009. And perhaps the LTTE agenda for separatism and Eelam had died with Prabhakaran on the banks of the Nandikadal lagoon nine years ago. How was Vijayakala to know the agenda of any existing remnants of the LTTE and whether they had even give up their call for a separate state of Eelam? After all how was she to be privy to the residue’s agenda? All she had sought for her people was protection, never mind what the LTTE stood for up to their destruction.
The second issue is this. The LTTE is a banned organisation. India banned it in 1992. The United States designated it as a foreign terrorist organisation in 1997. The United Kingdom designated it a proscribed terrorist group in 2001. The European Union consisting of 27 nations banned it in 2006 along with Canada in the same year. Lanka banned it from 1998 January to September 2002 and then again from January 2009. Does the lifting of the proscription of the LTTE to enable peace talks to continue by both Chandrika’s and Mahinda’s government during these seven years suggest an encouragement of sorts of this evil brigand?
The question then arises: what’s the law that governs and makes criminal a person calling for a banned organisation’s revival not for its ideology but for the perceived protection it has to offer to the public?
What if the JVP were to be banned tonight? And what if the day after a person called for its revival and sang hosannas in its favour? Of how it had been an independent voice and that he yearned to hear its echo? Would the fact that it had been responsible for two insurrections in the country in the past place him in the dock for expressing his sentiments wishing its return to give voice to the nation’s woes, even if it was anathema to the majority?
No criminal action can be brought without it being based on an existing law. And it must be left to the Attorney General to identify the specific law on which action against Vijayakala can be taken. And tonight, no doubt, the Attorney General, will be tossing and turning in restless sleep how to bring the transgressor to justice.
And as for Vijayakala, even if no law presently exist, public opprobrium must serve to place her in the stocks and damn her beyond the pale of public representation.
And as for the legal system, if there is a lacuna in the law, Parliament must bring one at its soonest to fill its vacuum. Or a thousand Vijayakalas will bloom to make the nation’s peace flower droop and wither.