{"id":83358,"date":"2023-12-31T18:00:15","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T22:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=83358"},"modified":"2024-01-01T00:56:43","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T04:56:43","slug":"deshabandu-tennekoon-along-with-tiran-alles-and-tsagala-ratnayake-presides-over-a-media-parade-ironically-titled-yukthiya-justice-in-catching-sprats-of-the-drug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=83358","title":{"rendered":"Deshabandu Tennekoon along with Tiran Alles and Sagala Ratnayake presides over a media parade, ironically titled \u2018Yukthiya\u2019 (Justice) in catching \u2018sprats\u2019 of the drug underworld while their political and police Godfathers escape the net."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

By<\/p>\n

Kishali Pinto-Jayawardene<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Sri Lanka\u2019s newest Bribery Commission cracks its shell with more than a smidgen of difficulty in the backdrop of ugly strain between its metaphorical parents, the Constitutional Council and President Ranil Wickremesinghe, circumstances can hardly be less propitious for this fledgling creature to survive, let alone thrive.<\/p>\n

Ministers and the proverbial figleaves<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Commission is established under a law which the President once airily promised, \u2018would be the best in South Asia\u2019 regardless of all the lessons that history teaches us on the sharp difference between a \u2018law\u2019 and its implementation. One does not need to go very far to highlight the paradoxes. The President\u2019s own Cabinet is stuffed with (alleged) gross corruptors, the latest scandal linked to the former Minister of Health regarding the unbelievably unconscionable procurement of substandard human immunoglobulin.<\/p>\n

This is in the wake of two suspects including the former Secretary to the Ministry of Health alleging that their statements to the Minister\u2019s culpability had not been properly recorded by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID). Commonsense dictates that the Minister concerned does not have a fig-leaf with which to cover himself. But commonsense is, of course, different from the rigorous course of the law. That is why we advisedly use the term \u2018alleged.\u2019<\/p>\n

This caution is expressed entirely tongue-in-cheek, if the meaning has to be made clearer to the dim-witted among us. But public sentiment has no such reservations, the question is (legitimately) asked as to why the Minister concerned, continues to serve in the Cabinet with another portfolio. In other words, the mood in the court of public opinion is unforgiving if not murderously angry. It is the man and woman on the street who have to pay with their lives for these frauds, not the rich who retreat to private hospitals or flee to Singapore after all.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nA \u2018Mahawamsa of corruption\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Still, it is to the good that the Maligakanda Magistrate yesterday directed the CID to record \u2018additional statements\u2019 from the suspects in question in regard to what had been \u2018allegedly\u2019 missed. This is now popularly referred to as the \u2018immunoglobulin scam\u2019 along with the \u2018garlic scam\u2019, the \u2018sugar scam\u2019 and countless others including that pernicious \u2018Central Bank bond scam.\u2019 Each scandal under a different Government but with the same old faces and the same drama played out over the media.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we can record our history of corruption in this way, a sort of a \u2018Mahawamsa of corruption\u2019 as it were and teach this to schoolchildren. That can be in the same way that the proud civilisational history of the country is chanted, the old glories of our \u2018chaityas,\u2019 our vistas of fertile paddy fields fed by enormous tanks and the grand kings who repeated that not a single drop of water or a single grain or rice shall be wasted.<\/p>\n

In fact, teaching children about political corruption and the demise of a nation will be more to the good than repeating those same old stories of Elara and Dhutugamunu and the invincibility of the Sinhala-Buddhist civilisation. As an aside, those stories of the Sinhala being \u2018good\u2019 and the Tamil being \u2018evil\u2019 are entirely contradictory of the profound respect that these two (Tamil and Sinhala) kings bore for one another. In this as well as in many other things, history is subverted by priests and political rulers alike for their own glory.<\/p>\n

Inequality and Inequity Galore<\/strong><\/p>\n

But to return to the point of this column, this is why, in all fairness, we express scepticism at the fate of this latest bribery and corruption fighting body that has come into being as 2023 winds down with extreme popular angst. Nevertheless, we must wish it well. In a country where miracles are in short supply, perhaps this will be a Christmas miracle in every sense of that term. Certainly Sri Lanka needs miraculous happenings, brought about by men and women of fortitude and determination to stand up to political and other pressures.<\/p>\n

This is exactly what Jesus Christ did when he lashed out in Jerusalem\u2019s Temple against corrupt money changers and merchants, accusing the Temple leaders of \u2018thievery\u2019 as the public cheered him. Biblical historians in fact, speculate that the Temple incident was the proximate reason for hastening Christ\u2019s crucifixion with some (arguable) consensus even in the Gospels to that effect. Then as now, the exploitation of the poor was rudely simple.<\/p>\n

Priests along with the political rulers of the day and the ruling elite, feasted, fed off and profited from the gullible. This Christmas, the spectacle of Colombo glittering with lights and festivities contrasted obscenely (and I use that word deliberately) with untold miseries in city slums and remote villages. <\/p>\n

And even while the Catholic Church\u2019s Cardinal, Malcolm Ranjith preaches his Christmas sermon of castigating Sri Lanka\u2019s rulers for the inequities that they have brought about, perhaps he might reflect on the Church\u2019s role also in that respect.
\nKarmic fate in a basic form<\/p>\n

But essentially, this is what Sri Lanka\u2019s bankruptcy has bequeathed us, the unprecedented widening of the gap between the (extremely) rich and the (extremely) poor and unprecedented lack of sympathy towards the widened to an unprecedented extent. <\/p>\n

Battered as never before in its post-independence history, the majority of the populace pushed into abject poverty by the very rulers whom they chose to elect with ecstatic hosannas as saviours of Sinhala-Buddhism, 2024 promises only extraordinary social unrest as a devastating tax hike crunches in with force.
\nThis is karmic fate, a consequence of decades-old vicious majority-minority propaganda on which only politicians grew rich. They were aided and abetted, let us not forget, by corporate \u2018fatcats\u2019, allies in the judicial, legal, medical professions, patrons in the Sangha and (once upon a time) the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

The effect has been incalculable on the Sinhala-Buddhist South.
\nThose not fortunate enough to flee the country\u2019s shores are condemned to live bereft of adequate nutrition, sub-standard education and paltry healthcare with corruption having a free reign. The living suffer while unborn generations abide by their miserable fates. In other words, just a few decades of grossly corrupt rule by Colombo\u2019s political elite have near-completely reversed highly ranked human development gains since independence.<\/p>\n

The New Year Nemesis<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018We will break into Colombo\u2019s \u2018loku\u2019 (large) houses, this is what the man told me\u2019 a neighbour said last week, relating a chilling conversation that he had with a \u2018tuk-tuk\u2019 driver. Ominously, this prophecy was said matter-of-fact, almost as if discussing the price of the fare, no more, no less. \u2018We cannot live like this, scrounging on the street, our children have no food and cannot pay for their books that the school demands. But Colombo\u2019s five star- hotels are full of the rich. This is not fair. We will rob,\u2019 he had said.
\nOrdinary crime has skyrocketed while the country\u2019s acting Inspector General of Police (IGP) Deshabandu Tennekoon along with his political patron, Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles and the President\u2019s Chief of Staff Sagala Ratnayake presides over a media parade, ironically titled \u2018Yukthiya\u2019 (Justice) in catching \u2018sprats\u2019 of the drug underworld while their political and police Godfathers escape the net.<\/p>\n

I say \u2018ironic\u2019 for many reasons. First, the word \u2018Justice\u2019 has come to be the most reviled term in the country, promising anything but justice. <\/p>\n

Second, while \u2018Justice\u2019 spearheads an operation against the underworld, that is singularly omitted from the Government\u2019s much touted Bill on \u2018Truth, Harmony and Reconciliation\u2019 for the minorities, whatever that may mean.<\/p>\n

Not Justice, only inequality and inequity beckons in the nemesis of a New Year.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:Sunday Times<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Kishali Pinto-Jayawardene As Sri Lanka\u2019s newest Bribery Commission cracks its shell with more than a smidgen of difficulty in the backdrop of ugly strain between its metaphorical parents, the Constitutional Council and President Ranil Wickremesinghe, circumstances can hardly be less propitious for this fledgling creature to survive, let alone thrive. Ministers and the proverbial …<\/p>\n

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