By
C.A.Chandraprema
The arrest of former minister Basil Rajapaksa should be a cause for concern for all Sri Lankans. With that single ill-advised act we have now crossed the thin red line that divides civilization from chaos. No leader in post independence history had ever crossed that line no matter what. Chandrika Kumaratunga came very close to it by trying to arrest Ranil Wickremesinghe in the run up to the parliamentary election of the year 2000, but even she did not take that final step over the line. But last week, the present government crossed that thin red line with the arrest of Basil Rajapaksa and the history of Sri Lankan will never be the same again. As parliamentarian Susil Premajayantha explained, Basil Rajapaksa was remanded not over any specific charges but to ‘continue investigations’. That in itself sets a wrong precedent that can be abused in the future.
Besides, this arrest was not made by a permanent investigative body of the police like the CID but by a special unit manned by handpicked officers newly created after the present government came into power. Furthermore, Basil was arrested soon after he gave a statement to this unit. The attorney general never had the time to study the statement and give his recommendations. None of this is going to augur well for the future of the country. One begins to wonder how such things can happen under the stewardship of an experienced politician like Ranil Wickremesinghe. When he became prime minister in 2001, we never saw anything like this. On the contrary, it was RW who doused the flames that Chandrika Kumaratunga had ignited. This time around it is RW’s government that appears to be igniting the flames.
Of course there are other parties in this government before which even the UNP is helpless (as witnessed by the ongoing 19th Amendment fiasco) and it is not just the UNP that is making these very short-sighted moves. But the special police unit that arrested Basil was set up by the UNP government. (This unit however can be influenced by the president as well through the IGP.) The question is why is the UNP allowing these things to happen? Witch hunts and arrests are the surest way to make a government unpopular. RW watched how CBK shot herself in the foot between 1994 and 2001 and he took care not to repeat those mistakes. In fact CBK herself learnt some lessons and she never repeated those mistakes after she was restored to power between 2004-2005.
Smear campaigns, witch hunts and arrests not only makes a government unpopular among the ordinary people watching such events, it also has the effect of galvanizing opposition to the government. This is the lesson that president Premadasa did not live long enough to learn. President Premadasa was a man who never persecuted the opposition. In fact Anuruddha Ratwatte has described Premadasa as a ‘suhada minisek’ (a friendly person) in his autobiography. How did a man who could be described as a friendly person even by his arch rivals, end up being so unpopular? It was the unnecessary persecution of Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmuadali that made people look upon Premadasa as an unbalanced and vindictive ogre. Yet even Premadasa never went so far as to have Gamini or Lalith arrested and remanded.
The UNP should be very mindful about what is happening. They should remember that Presidents Premadasa and CBK carried out their witch hunts from a position of strength. The governments they led were largely single party governments. Premadasa was the president with a clear majority in parliament even after Gamini and Lalith were kicked out. Likewise CBK was president with a steady parliamentary coalition. The UNP is only a minority government with the presidency being held by an outsider. Besides, both Premadasa and CBK made use of their ‘political peaks’ to consolidate their control over the government. The UNP won the presidential election of December 1988 and consolidated themselves at the parliamentary elections of February 1989. The PA won the parliamentary election of 1994 and reached a peak at the November presidential election the same year. In contrast to all this, what happened in 2015 is that the UNP donated their peak to Maithripala Sirisena.
There was a certain build up that the UNP managed to achieve in 2014 with the Western PC elections and especially the Uva PC elections. They donated that entire build up to Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015 – the presidential election was the peak of the anti-Rajapaksa forces. There is no second peak. It is obvious to anyone but the blind that the opposition coalition that defeated Rajapaksa is now in decline. The UNP will be facing the next parliamentary election not at the peak of their popularity but during a decline. The UNP is no doubt acutely aware of this reality, which is why they are so anxious to have an early parliamentary election. They are alright for the time being because of cuts in the prices of certain food items and fuel, but if they are forced by circumstances to increase the price of anything, they’ll be done for In fact, as we write this, news just came in of taxes on imported potatoes and onions being increased. Such measures are usually taken to ensure that local producers get a good price. But the government will have to hope that this increase in taxes does not increase the prices of these items by even a rupee on the open market, because the opposition will be shouting from the rooftops about it.
That the UNP will be going in for the next election during a period of decline is known to all party insiders. Since coming into power in January, the UNP government has reduced the prices of fuel and some food items and hopes to win votes on that. But as a political party, they have been in the doldrums. Party activists have not got jobs. In a situation reminiscent of the fiasco of 2001-2004, a rift has opened up between the ministers and office bearers in the government and the party rank and file. Party members employed in the state sector are unable to get anything done by the ministers. If anybody is wondering why we did not see any UNP agitation or a show of force on the streets when Sirisena’s proxies were trying to whittle down the 19th Amendment, the reason for this is the indifference and despondency among party activists. Back in 2001, in the run up to the parliamentary election of that year, even relatively unimportant politicians of the UNP had dozens of young activists working for them. Today however one does not see that. You get young people coming forward to work for political parties only at the peak. This time around, as we said earlier, the UNP sacrificed their peak to Sirisena and are now waiting to contest a parliamentary election in a situation where their political fortunes are in decline.
It may be pertinent to add that this is another reason why Sirisena is morally obliged to do the UNP’s bidding – not only did the UNP cast their votes (and according to what some UNP organizers say, spent their own money) to bring Sirisena into power, they also sacrificed their political peak to him. Be that as it may, what the UNP should realize is that they are on a very weak wicket and all these witch hunts and arrests are taking place not from a position of strength, but from a position of weakness. If anyone thinks the persecution of opponents will help consolidate the present government, that’s a delusion – it will only galvanize public resentment against them and sharpen the decline. The reaction that is building up is what all those involved in the present government will have to watch out for. Already, opposition MPs like Mahindananda Aluthgamage and Bandula Gunawardene have gone on record saying that this is the worst post-election campaign of persecution that has ever been carried out in post independence history, and that’s true. Never after any change of government have politicians on the losing side been vilified, hauled before the Bribery Commission, and specially created police investigation units, taken to courts and carted off to jail in this manner.
If one party can do this so can the other – and the UNP in particular will have to watch out for the reaction that is building up. The line has already been crossed and if things go the other way which will inevitably happen sooner or later, they are done for. The UNP is the largest entity in the present ruling set up. There are non-UNP individuals and miniscule political parties that may in subtle and devious manner be influencing these undesirable events. While they too will inevitably have to face the music, the brunt of the reaction will have to be borne by members of the UNP. This is why the UNP should move fast to arrest this trend before it destroys them. It’s still not too late.
The spotlight is on the UNP
As fate would have it, the biggest mistakes made in this regard were by handpicked UNP appointees – the special police unit to investigate financial crimes and the newly appointed director general of the Bribery Commission. Last week saw the UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe visiting India for the specific purpose of offering his own weight in sandalwood to the Guruvayur temple in Kerala apparently to offset malefic planetary effects. He never did that even at the height of CBK’s persecution a decade and a half ago. There must be a good reason now for him to do so now. Indeed some of the things that have been occurring have no rational explanation.
The new director general of the Bribery Commission appointed by the new UNP government issued former President Mahinda Rajapaksa a notice to appear before the Bribery commission to answer a charge that the ministerial portfolio given to Tissa Attanayke was a bribe to get him to cross over. That set off a storm of protest and actually resulted in boosting support for MR. Every time the government has tried to persecute or act tough on the opposition, it has boomeranged. When rallies in support of MR first began to be held, the president banned SLFP members from attending those rallies but that only increased attendance. Only 26 parliamentarians attended the Ratnapura rally. Sirisena sacked four of them from the SLFP central committee and days later, 58 MPs went to see MR in Tangalle for the new year. What came immediately afterwards was that ill-advised letter summoning MR to the Bribery Commission.
In one fell swoop, the 58 increased to 118 MPs including four ministers of the government who signed up in defence of MR. For the first time in the history of our legislature, MPs occupied the parliamentary premises in protest and the number of MPs who spent the night in the well of the house was nearly twice the number of UNP parliamentarians in the present parliament. Ultimately the Bribery Commission was forced to retreat. This was a colossal setback for the UNP as well as the Sirisena faction of the SLFP. So embarrassing was this episode for the government that pro-UNP or pro-yahapalana websites like Lanka e News and Lanka News Web were trying to say that that this letter summoning MR to the Bribery Commission was not sent by the UNP-appointed director general but by the chairman who was an appointee of the previous government!
That is to say in effect that someone in the Bribery Commission forged the director general’s signature and sent that letter off to MR so that the whole issue would blow up in the face of the government. The concocting of such stories shows the extent of the impact this fiasco has had on the powers that be. What would possess a person with legal training to write a letter to a former president implying that giving a cabinet portfolio to an MP is a bribe? Furthermore, in a situation where the government led by Ranil Wickremesinghe did nothing on 2001 against CBK who persecuted both the UNP and RW himself personally, what would possess him to allow Basil Rajapaksa to be imprisoned over some flimsy pretext which sets a fearful precedent for the future? Nobody is going to be so naive as to believe that some uniformed cop made an independent decision to have BR remanded without both the president and the prime minister being aware of it. Only a politically motivated cop who is willing to do the bidding of his masters would dare do something like that without either a court order or at the very least the attorney general’s go ahead. In Basil’s case they had neither.
Courtesy:Sunday Island