Policing security, or ‘securing’ Police?

By N Sathiya Moorthy
Chennai, 11 March 2018

It is sad that the nation should be burning in the flame of communal hatred and racist violence all over again, a decade after it was slowly but surely learning to leave it all behind. Sri Lanka was possibly ready (?) to open a new chapter in the short, post-Independence history, which is less than a page-long in the longer and larger Sri Lanka story, when this blot has appeared. Credit should go to the government leadership for acting decisively, even if belatedly, to curb the violence, even if it could not prevent it in the first place.

Yet, it is anybody’s guess why the twin leadership of President Maithiripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe thought it wise to have taken the crucial Law and Order portfolio from the hands of then Minister Sagala Rathnayaka, for the latter to handle it even if in the interim. There is again no justifiable reason for them to find a full-time minister in the midst of the Kandy violence, which in their own wisdom has necessitated the proclamation of a short period of national Emergency.

This has nothing to say about the suitability and ability, or otherwise, of the hurriedly-sworn in new Minister, Ranjith Madduma Bandara. If Cabinet colleague, Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka’s reported observations that Bandara did not even know about the impending change of charge until he arrived in the President’s Office for being sworn-in, is even half-true, then something is again rotten in the state of affairs in Sri Lanka, even if not necessarily in the State of Sri Lanka.

Leave aside other elements of political instability that has not-so-unexpectedly rocked the ‘unity government’ almost from the start. If their sympathisers and supporters inside the nation, and more so outside, did not see it, they did not want to see it. But, even they could not avoid acknowledging the obvious until the nation-wide LG polls of 10 February bared them open.

It is such/similar callousness of the political leadership that may have contributed to the current situation, though it was most definitely not the main reason. It was wrong on the part of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe to have though L&O deserved only an interim minister, if only to deflect national attention from the political problems haunting the unholy alliance of the past three-plus years. It was even more wrong of him, as also President Sirisena to have so very hastily concluded that they could change the captain of the ship, all over again, not just in mid-voyage but also when it was caught in the eye of a storm.

Application of mind

If an L&O crisis demanding the instant imposition of Emergency, however short, is not the occasion for the Prime Minister of the time to be more concerned about and engaged in, on the L&O front, what else could it be? The Government itself explained, and rightly so, how the Emergency would enable the commissioning of the armed forces for internal security duties in a bigger way, and also in the conferring of ‘policing powers’ too on them, it required all-out coordination at all levels, especially at the top-most political leadership.

The Constitution provides for the President to be his own Defence Minister, in charge of the armed forces. The Prime Minister as the leader of the incumbent Government, even if not the ‘Head of the Government’, which is the President under the Constitution, already heading L&O may have done a better job of coordination, that too at a time when avoidable criticism was being aired about the very portfolio.

This is not to say that the Government was seeking to deflect the political crisis emanating from the LG poll debacle by changing the L&O Minister. It is worse still to accuse Prime Minister Wickremesinghe of not wanting to take the responsibility for the L&O failures in the Amapara-Kandy anti-Muslim racial riots, and attribute the mid-stream swearing-in of Ranjith Bandara in his place. But there can be no denying of the charge of ‘lack of application of mind’ in either case.

Bee in the bonnet

It was thus unbecoming of an armed forces chief, that too with war-time honours, to have commented negatively on the change-of-guard in the L&O Ministry when the country was going through the new communal situation. Fonseka is the only Field Marshal that the country has ever seen, and this Government conferred the honorific on him.

Anyone else in Fonseka’s place might have chosen to stay away from any politics of any kind, but he chose to enter the fray, as if to answer for the humiliation under the predecessor Rajapaksa regime. The incumbent Government elevated him army chief over the head of his seniors – no questions asked by him, or his current crop of supporters, since. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe also drafted him into the UNP after Fonseka’s earlier forays into politics had feared.

Wickremesinghe and the UNP also elevated him a ‘nominated’ MP after he had lost the popular elections, and also inducted him into the Cabinet. If nothing else, the Fonseka camp should have had faith in the party and the leader that had taken him this far in national politics, after all the controversies that had surrounded him post-retirement. If they had concluded that the party and the leader knew what good to make of him, and what good to make to him, they should have known that the party and the leader also knew what not to do with him.

The post-LG poll weeks have seen the Rajapaksas, especially former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, becoming politically more relevant than around and after the previous presidential and parliamentary elections of 2015.

There are now fears in various sections of the ruling UNP-SLFP combine that his camp may bounce back onto power in the next round of presidential/parliamentary polls, due in/by2020.

It is in this context, campaigns were made for Fonseka to be put in charge of L&O, if only to fast-track pending corruption and other criminal cases against the Rajapaksas. Though a war-victor of an army chief Fonseka has had no record of enforcing law, as known to police investigators and criminal courts in the country. The implication was that given his hatred for the Rajapaksas, flowing from his post-retirement humiliation, including unpardonable cashiering, Fonseka as L&O Minister would ‘fix’ the Rajapaksas, using the L&O machinery in ways that the political leaderships had failed thus far.

It is a fallacious argument, to say the least. If there is anyone who was/is believed to have been vindictive to his political opponents and individual critics, it was said to be none other than Mahinda Rajapaksa. If the armed forces’ success story in the conclusive ‘Eelam War IV’ should be the bench-mark for deciding on the qualification of a Minister for L&O, then, according to many, Gota Rajapaksa, then Defence Secretary, would be a better candidate for the job, even now.

Such arguments, all of them negative, galore. Thus for someone in Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka’s place to make a public issue of a change of L&O Minister, that too when the nation is facing a grave crisis and when he too was a responsible member of the very same Government, leaves an avoidable taste in the mouth. If it is the proverbial bee-in-the-bonnet attitude then it should be quelled, and not sought to be quenched.

Not now, not ever

It should be nobody’s case that criminals, be it of the corrupt political types or the likes of those that inflamed racial passions in Ampara and Kandy now, and against the nation’s other minority communities all along could go scot free. But it has been a democratic tradition the world over that a retired official of whatever background or rank is not put in charge of a ministry that he had served earlier.

Fonseka’s was a specialised job under a specialised ministry, and that by itself should be a conventional disqualification from putting him in charge of ministries that he had served, at whatever rank. In his case, it does not stop with Defence (even if as a junior minister reporting to the President, the Cabinet in charge). It also includes L&O, which over the past decades until after the end of the war, came under the direct command of the Defence Ministry.

If nothing else, these are issues that responsible Cabinet ministers with Fonseka’s kind of military discipline, should have discussed with the party leadership, and within the party and government fora. Certainly, this is not the hour of national crisis for him to have aired such dubious arguments, that too in public.

If anything, such outbursts, if they go without any denial from his side, should be disqualification enough for him to be put in charge of a more sensitive and discretion-centric ministry such as L&O. Maybe, the current national crisis should also be the right occasion for the Government and party leadership(s) to read the riot act to the likes of Fonseka – and he is not alone in this, but only the latest, though not necessarily the last.

For their part, the SLPP-JO, ever itching to have this government and Prime Minister out, or at least tied continually to the continuing political instability at all levels, acted more responsibly. With the nation caught in the midst of racial violence, the JO decided to put off the submission of no-trust motion against Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and his Government.

It was/is common knowledge that Parliament would not have taken up the no-trust vote for debate and vote on that very day. It was then a considered acknowledgement of the experienced political class that at times of national crises of the kind, nothing should be done to undermine the authority of the Sri Lankan State, as represented by the incumbent government, whoever or whatever.

It is this that again has shown up in the case of Fonseka, to his possible elevation as L&O Minister. As was reported, some sections of the police top-brass were uncomfortable with the prospects. After all, the de-linking of the police from the Defence Ministry’s overall supervision, command-and-control, had marked the near-conclusion of the earlier war-era Emergency.

But then, for Cabinet spokesman and veteran minister, Dr Rajitha Senaratne, too, to blow Fonseka’s trumpet, out of turn, just after Prime Minister Wickremesinghe had just taken charge of the same, speaks that some in the system had not learnt their lessons as yet from the LG poll results. It did/not matter how Minister Senaratne came to say it all in public, when least expected. The question also remains whom he was speaking for beyond and behind the self?

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. email: sathiyam54@gmail.com)