A government's 'games' and the peoples' fear

There is no end, it seems, to the Government’s seemingly ingenious ‘games’ while ordinary life in Sri Lanka remains largely paralysed by fear. This week, the Leader of the House called upon the Opposition to submit a proposal for the appointment of a Parliamentary Committee to investigate the alleged dereliction of duty by Sri Lanka’s Inspector General of Police ( IGP) Pujith Jayasundara in regard to Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday attacks by islamist jihadists.

The UNF’s curious perambulations over accountability

Despite President Maithripala Sirisena calling for his resignation, the IGP has refused to do so in what is another unenviable first for the country. But the United National Front (UNF) Government’s curious perambulations over accountability for more than three hundred and fifty lives lost, countless more seriously injured and the catapulting of Sri Lanka into a calamitous state of insecurity under its watch must be questioned in good conscience. This ‘passing the buck’ between a bickering President and Prime Minister will not do. Why is the Opposition being called upon to submit the motion to remove the IGP when it is the Government’s own and bounden duty to do so?

To be clear, this issue goes beyond a single individual. As percipient political observers may have realised, the airy insouciance of the UNF over the IGP’s removal in the wake of the Easter Sunday mayhem has become grist for the excitable mill of opposition politicians who are cackling that the appointment and dismissal of high public officers must not be fettered by independent commissions. It is also commonly (and wrongly) claimed that the failure to deal summarily with the

IGP is due to the 19th

Amendment. That is not correct. Its many internal contradictions and convolutions notwithstanding, the 19th Amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with the removal of the

IGP.

As stated earlier in these column spaces, the Removal of Officers (Procedure) Act, No. 5 of 2002 following the praised 17th Amendment prescribes a simple parliamentary process for the removal of the IGP and the Attorney General. The incorporation of safeguards preventing hasty executive dismissal was thought to be necessary to insulate these posts from political pressure. Indeed, the procedure for the IGP’s removal should have been resorted to by the Government even before the Easter Sunday attacks given the erratic behaviour of the incumbent in office. But its hand was stayed due to political agendas.

Bewilderment regarding the growth of islamist radicalism

Meanwhile, political responsibility is conspicuously lacking in other quarters as well. How did massive grants from Saudi Arabia and Qatar for a so-called ‘Batticaloa Campus’ overcome stringent bureaucratic requirements ordinarily in force? In what way did the Eastern Province Governor’s son grab shares worth Rs 500 million of this ‘campus’? Did Sri Lanka’s utterly inept Government and a self-serving Opposition have to wait till Catholics and Christians were killed while praying at the altar and tourists blown up while having breakfast to wake up to the Wahabi infiltration of Sri Lanka? The fact that this happened gradually and during their consecutive terms in power is now unequivocally established. So is political complicity thereof. The President, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition (former President Mahinda Rajapaksa) are all undeniably responsible.

And let us also venture into uncomfortable terrain apart from mercilessly and deservedly flogging politicians. There is genuine public bewilderment as to how islamist radicals bloomed in Sri Lanka like fronds of a poisonous undergrowth, arming themselves and training themselves to silently carry out a strike spectacularly exceeding their best expectation. How is it that controversies surrounding the Batticoloa campus remained absent from national political debates? Is it conceivable that an islamist training camp (whether ten acres, one acre, or half an acre) could have existed in densely packed and populated Kattankudy without general knowledge? While the rise of radical Salafism in the East were objected to by Muslim citizens who were its first victims, were their complaints highlighted in Colombo’s discourses on ‘ethnicity’ and ‘victimisation’?

In sum, how is it that Wahabist enclaves in Kattankudy having knock-on impact in areas as far away as Mawanella grew from strength to strength while the focus of copious conference papers were predominantly on the phenomenon of anti-Muslim violence by ultra-nationalist Sinhala Buddhist groups like the Boda Bala Sena? While Islamaphobic attacks are not denied, the sum of the problem was surely more than this? Indeed, those few critics attempting to unravel these issues were met with a wave of rebuttals, some smugly if not stupidly pointing to ‘reconciliation projects’ in ‘affected areas’ in support. Such explanations, as we see to our cost now, were catastrophically misguided. This begs the question as to how much pre and post 2015 ‘reconciliation projects’ are/were rooted in the community soil as opposed to being ‘remote controlled’ by a selected few in a never ending cycle of exploitation (of some) and gain (of others).

The law should not only operate against islamist foot soldiers

So was turning a blind eye to radicalisation by a few with ‘privileged’ political cover thought to be a necessary evil in securing a stake for ‘minority interests’ at the national level? If so, history has repeated itself most direfully. As islamist radicals gradually consolidated themselves in exclusive political niches of the East and in Colombo without much challenge, a yawning and menacingly opportunistic political vaccum was created. Sri Lanka’s Muslims have now been thrust into a raging fire of distrust and suspicion with increased social alienation amidst communal rhetoric spewed from political platforms. This palpably growing and dangerously sullen alienation of the Muslim community must be halted at all costs. While strong community and religious leaders are important, soothing words have their limits when the public is gripped by overriding anxious tension as to where the next bomb will explode or when the next attack will take place. There is a manifest lack of confidence in the political leadership. Rhetoric must therefore yeld to concrete operation of the law against protectors of islamist radicalisation, not its foot soldiers and tiffin carriers.

A day after the Easter Sunday attacks, Highways and Petroleum Resource Minister Kabir Hashim claimed that a suicide bomber in the Easter Sunday attacks had been released upon arrest a few months ago following involvement in extremist activities due to ‘pressure from a powerful politician.’ We assume that this statement was made with responsibility, given also the fact that the Minister’s coordinating secretary had been shot by the same radicals in retaliation for the investigations. But later, only a fumbling explanation was offered that investigators were ‘looking into this.’

Dangerous pointeer to what lies ahead

Even now, the Sri Lankan people are none the wiser apart from some Muslim politicians furiously denying the charge. Has the cat (idiomatically) got hold of the Government’s collective tongue on a serious allegation made by its own Minister, himself of Muslim ethnicity no less? The public needs to know. Particularly, the Government’s distasteful shadow-boxing on accountability for the deaths and destruction has enabled an undermining of the validity of the constitutional argument for independent institutions and facilitated return to the power aggrandising rationale of the discredited 18th Amendment. This is a dangerous pointer to what awaits us.

Two weeks from the Easter Sunday atrocities, the nation awaits clear answers to questions ranging from the IGP’s removal to the politicisation of police investigations. If fury is not to spill over to the streets, the Government may be well advised to supply them pronto without playing typically nonsensical games.