Sirisena’s Aluth Avurudu gift to the nation: The rope
Druggies on death row await hangman and his noose
If President Sirisena’s avowed determination made six months ago to execute convicted drug offenders presently on death seems to have waivered, his meeting with ‘ hang the bastards’ Duterte of the Philippines last month clearly has stiffened his resolve to ‘ string the lot’.
No doubt, he was impressed with Duterte’s popularity rating that has soared to 83 percent after carrying out the executions in his country; and, fortified after his meeting the Philippine’s President who has executed hundreds of druggies, Sirisena announced last month on February 9 in Parliament to present to the nation his Aluth Avurudhu gift. His sense of timing to coincide with the Sinhala New Year was remarkable. Addressing Parliament in the first week of February, he announced there will be a hanging in Lanka, the first to be done after Maru Sira was hanged forty three years ago on August 5, 1975.
Fellow proponent of executions Duterte was the first to hail Sirisena on his hanging mission. On Feb 12, he said what a jolly good fellow Sirisena was and told him ‘ hang the bastards.’ He said "I knew the most basic sorrow and agony of the people is drugs. And we are not buffeted on both sides, we get a double whammy. The cartel of Mexico is expanding and the greed for money, easy money, dirty money, increases their appetite every day," Duterte said in a speech in Davao City.
"If you look at the Philippines, your left side, your left hand is the west, your right hand is the east. On the western side, we have the golden triangle, also a well known drug cartel in Asia and doing now business in the East Asian countries, prompting even the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka say, 'I will follow Duterte. I will kill the bastards,'" he added.
But, unlike the offers drug godfathers make which none can refuse without risking retribution, is Sirisena’s promise to carry out his first execution before the arrival of the avurudhu raven, the koha, one more promise he cannot keep? Not because he is wanting in resolve but because of the logistic problems involved judicial murder.
But there’s many a nick between the neck and the noose.
For starters, there is the question of the rope. One that will withstand the fall of a 200 kilo weight. Apparently the forty year stay of hangings which kept the death penalty in the statue book but held suspended its actual execution, has rendered the nation unable to produce the coir fit for a presidential hanging. And this from a nation with a proud track record of doling out punishment to fit the crime.
Hundreds of years ago, in the gory days of yore, in an era where today’s Sinhala chauvinists still pine for and wish it had still existed, there was what was call the ‘ dasa vada’, the ten commandments that dictated what punishment merited the crime. Apart from being impaled in the anus, another favourite of the kings was to tie the culprit summarily found guilty between two coconut trees, tie him with his arms and legs spread wide eagle with a strong coir rope and then to cut the two tree so that it ripped the mortal frame in half. Pathetic, isn’t it, that a nation so rich with craft and ingenuity, cannot now produce a simple rope to hang a man?
So that’s Sirisena’s first obstacle. The rope now has to be imported. Perhaps tenders will have to be called and awarded to some Chinese company to provide a rope fit enough to hang a Lankan on a string.
The second one is more challenging. Unless one wants to do the darned thing oneself, the task of finding a hangman must tax the ingenuity of a king. And heavy must lay the head that wears the presidential crown as he ponders over to find the ideal chap to put the noose around another’s neck and make another swing.
Apparently, there’s enough takers for the job. Some 102 have sent in their appli- cations for the task, including one American guy. As if Sirisena didn’t have enough on his plate having to fend off foreign judges from passing judgment on Lankan citizens as the United Nation’s Human Rights Council demands, he now has to contend with the uproar that will surely rise in having a foreign executioner as well charged with throttling Lankan citizens.
A hundred and two may have sent their CVs, but the question is whether they have the necessary qualification?
According to the government advertisement published in the newspapers, they must first have A’ Level qualification to do the job, which might possibly rule out many Parliamentarians on the prowl moonlighting for added income.
And a must, as listed in the job vacancy ad, is that one must have an ‘ exemplary moral character’ to kill another human being which will rule out the likes of Madush on whose orders from Dubai, it is said, scores of rival drug dealers were killed to safeguard his own patch of the drug trade.
But in the midst of Sirisena’s lust to prove himself a macho man in the style and mode of the Philippine’s Duterte in the belief that it will increase his ratings in the manner it seems to have done for Duterte when troops were ordered to shoot down any suspected drug peddler wherever found, does the death penalty act as a deterrent?
For those who plan murder in cold blood also plan their escape route and never think they will be caught. Those who commit rape never think of being strung up when brutish sexual lust takes over their being at that moment in time. And those who deal in deadly drugs always believe they can bribe their way out by paying politicians or that they can flee to Dubai or hide amongst the millions in India and will never be caught till, as it happened to Madush, circumstances catch up with them. The death penalty exists only to satisfy society’s blood lust and craving for justice and condemns all, stains all, leaves all with the blood of judicial murder on their hands. As Jesus Christ said on the cross, ‘ Father forgive them, for they do not understand.’