Deshabandu Tennekoon, the suspended Inspector General of Police, surrendered to the Matara Magistrate last Wednesday after leading the force he once headed on a merry chase for some 20 days, resulting in a lot of egg on the face of the police. He did so after unsuccessfully moving Court of Appeal earlier in the week seeking a writ order to prevent his arrest. This was obviously a last ditch attempt which failed. No doubt fearing that he could not hide for ever, Tennekoon turned up at the court house early on Wednesday morning, reportedly in a Benz car although there is no confirmation of that, staying in the court room until his case was taken up later in the day.

Although we believe the police could have arrested him when he turned up in court, as is known to have been done in the past, that did not happen. Tennekoon would have no doubt been prepared for such an eventuality. The prosecutor went on record that the fugitive should have been in a holding cell rather than seated in the open court room. At the end of the day he was remanded till April 3 and taken away to the Angunukolapelessa jail under special escort by the prison authorities who have been directed to ensure his safety in custody. This is an obvious precaution given the suspect’s notoriety and it was not long ago that a suspect was shot dead as he stood on a courtroom dock. Also, many grudges are known to have been settled in jail in the past.

Deshabandu Tennekoon is not the only high profile fugitive who has recently evaded the long arm of the law. Readers will no doubt remember that the woman accomplice, disguised as a lawyer, who smuggled in the firearm used in the recent court room killing in a hollowed out copy of the Criminal Procedure Code, is not yet in custody although an attractive reward for finding her has been offered. Notably no such inducement was offered by law enforcers for the arrest of their fugitive chief. But a lot else has been done in searching his home where some 795 bottles of foreign liquor and 214 bottles of wine had been found. These salacious details were presented to parliament last week by Public Security Minister Ananda Wijeypala who is the political authority responsible for the police. Since we are now into a New Year and Christmas was only recently past, Tennekoon probably received these as gifts which are customary in this season particularly to those holding high office and others who can do favours. The minister, no doubt, derived much satisfaction in revealing these details to parliament just as much as his cabinet colleagues have relished exposing misdoings of predecessor governments during the ongoing committee stage on the 2025 budget debate.

It is not unusual for police to take family members of wanted suspects as hostages until the quarry is either arrested or surrenders. This was not done in Tennekoon’s case although his family had been questioned about his whereabouts. Also there have been other past instances of high profile wanted suspects evading arrest for much longer periods than the suspended IGP. One such was Rear Admiral Royce de Mel, a former commander of the then Royal Ceylon Navy, who was wanted in connection with the abortive 1962 coup d’etat. De Mel successfully evaded arrest for several weeks before he was surrendered to the specially created trial-at-bar that tried the accused by his counsel, GG Ponnambalam Q.C. Many years after de Mel’s death, details of where he hid in a remote plantation bungalow were published in the media.

While Tennekoon was in hiding, there were threats of confiscation of his property and punishment to those who helped him were made although it was not clear whether such measures were enforceable or not. The public will now have to await the unraveling of the usually prolonged legal process before being able to see where this matter will eventually end. But it is patently clear that Deshabndu Tennekoon’s was a rank bad appointment to the position of IGP. He had been found guilty of torture by the supreme court in December, 2023 in what was described as a “historic judgment” where it was held that he was “personally responsible” for acts of torture against a suspect in custody. Before this judgment there were other allegations of his being complicit in attacking peaceful protests and making death threats to journalists and much more.

Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe resisted appointing Tennekoon as IGP extending the tenure of his predecessor, CD Wickremeratne for three month periods several times before he caved into demands by a Tennekoon patron before finally making the appointment. But this also necessitated some sleight of hand at the Constitutional Council (CC) which had to approve the appointment. Then Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene counted the votes of two absent members of the CC as noes (rather than absent) against Tennekoon declared a tie and then registered his own casting vote to record approval.

This demonstrated that even the checks and balances safety mechanism of the CC has been aborted for a clearly bad appointment to be made. It is to be hoped that such unfortunate situations will not be allowed to arise in the future.

Saturday 22nd March, 2025

A protest by a group of unemployed graduates has been going on for days near Parliament. The protesters are urging the JVP-led NPP government to fulfil its promise to employ them in the state sector. The government has apparently adopted the proverbial ostrich posture, hoping that the problem will resolve itself without its intervention. But the protesters say they will not go away until the government carries out its promise to them.

There was a heavy police presence near the unemployed graduates’ protest yesterday with a water cannon vehicle at the ready. One can only hope that there won’t be a confrontation between the protesters and the police.

The government has announced its decision to recruit 30,000 more workers into the public service, and it is only natural that the unemployed graduates have taken to the streets, demanding jobs. They are obviously eyeing some of the vacancies which, the government says, have arisen in the state sector.

The state service is already overstaffed as successive governments have used it as a source of employment for their supporters over the years. There is a pressing need to downsize the unproductive, ever-burgeoning public service, which is a drain on the state coffers. We already have one state employee for every 15 citizens.

The government has taken a census of some crop-raiding animals, such as monkeys and peafowl, claiming that it needs reliable data to tackle the problem of depredation in a scientific manner. Curiously, it has not cared to carry out a comprehensive survey on state institutions to find out the excess workers in them and assess the efficiency of those outfits so as to streamline the public service. Progress will continue to elude this country unless its state service is rationalised urgently. Successive governments have baulked at doing so for fear of a political backlash. The UNP-led UNF government (2001-2004) tried to reform the state sector, but it was dislodged and its successor restored the status quo ante.

One’s sympathies are with the protesting unemployed undergraduates; they are some of the victims of the current education and political systems. Most products of Sri Lankan universities lack employability mostly due to deficiencies in the education system, which needs reform.

Students themselves are not without blame for this sorry state of affairs; most of them do not care to gain the skills demanded by the job market. They expect the state to employ them after their graduation. Governments over the decades have given university graduates jobs in the state sector for political reasons. But this practice cannot go on indefinitely, given severe resource constraints and increasing pressure from the international lending agencies to curtail state expenditure. The day may not be far off when the state service has to be downsized whether politicians like it or not.

The government will have to stop dilly-dallying and make a firm policy decision on state sector recruitments. Those who are to graduate from the state universities need to be told the bitter truth, in advance, that they will not be able to secure jobs in the state sector as of right. Unless the government reduces the public sector salary bill drastically to increase its revenue significantly, the economy will not be able to emerge from the present crisis. However, as for the graduates on the warpath near Parliament, the government is left with no alternative but to find ways and means of carrying out its election promise or face the consequences.

What Sri Lankan governments should do is to develop the national economy, bring in educational reforms, take steps to produce employable graduates and create employment opportunities for the country’s youth. Instead, they choose to expand the state sector at the expense of the economy. There’s the rub.

Friday 21st March, 2025

There has been a sharp increase in fatal accidents on Sri Lanka’s expressways during the past several years. On Tuesday night, a university lecturer lost his life and his family members sustained serious injuries in a mishap on the Kurunegala-Mirigama stretch of the Central Expressway. Road accidents cause about 2,500 deaths a year in Sri Lanka. Most of these accidents are preventable, according to road safety experts.

Public focus is typically on bereavement caused by road fatalities, but these incidents lead to serious social and economic issues as well. A World Bank (WB) report, Delivering Road Safety in Sri Lanka; Leadership Priorities and Initiatives to 2030, reveals that ‘the high road crash fatality and injury rates on Sri Lanka’s roads undermine the economic growth and progress made over the past decade on reducing poverty and boosting prosperity’. The report says the annual crash deaths per capita in Sri Lanka are twice the average rate in high-income countries and five times that of the best performing countries in the world! Sri Lanka reportedly has the worst road fatality rate among its immediate neighbours in the South Asia region. Numerous programmes have been implemented under successive governments to ensure road safety, but they have not yielded the desired results, and the Grim Reaper has been in overdrive.

Road safety experts have identified the following factors, inter alia, as the common causes of crashes on expressways and other roads, the world over: speeding, distracted driving, reckless driving, fatigue, driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, inclement weather conditions, inadequate road conditions, tailgating, improper lane changes, inexperience of drivers, overtaking dangerously, poor visibility, unroadworthy vehicles, poor signage or lack of road markings and impatience or time pressure. One of the aforesaid factors or a combination of two or more of them could lead to fatal accidents on any road. So, any strategy to prevent road mishaps consists in addressing those causes.

Crashes on expressways are usually rear-end collisions, as is obvious, and they involve heavy vehicles, in most cases. This is something the police should pay special attention to. On expressways, one can see many vehicles with taillights that are too dim to be noticed from a distance at night. Bulk haulers do not display properly-lit overlength signs. They pose a grave danger to other vehicles that ply at 100 kmph behind them at night. Such vehicles must not be allowed to use expressways or any other roads.

The police personnel stationed at interchanges are required to conduct visual inspections of vehicles, especially ill-maintained ones, that enter expressways to determine their roadworthiness, but they do not seem to carry out their duties and functions diligently. The only thing they do properly is to ticket errant drivers who exceed speed limits. Most drivers are aware of the expressway stretches that are not monitored by speed cameras, and they often tend to break speed limits in such areas, endangering their own lives as well as others’.

Countries such as South Korea, China, Australia, and Italy reportedly use drones equipped with speed detection technologies to monitor traffic, and this method is reported to have yielded impressive results. Sri Lanka should acquire the modern technologies to curb speeding, and the costs thereof can be passed on to errant drivers in the form of increases in fines for their efforts to break the sound barrier, as it were.

As for sleep-related road accidents, which have become a significant concern, there is a need for more rest areas along the expressways. Gadgets and technologies are available to monitor drivers’ eye movements and facial expressions and detect signs of drowsiness and fatigue. There are also steering wheel sensors to detect drowsiness of drivers. Modern vehicles come fitted with them, and some drowsiness detection systems can be retrofitted to older vehicles to help save lives. Making such technologies available at affordable prices should be part of any road safety programme.

The National Council for Road Safety, the police, etc., have been working tirelessly to make roads safe, but their efforts need a big fillip from the political authority. The above-mentioned WB report has said Sri Lanka will require an additional investment of almost US$ 2 billion to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 3.6 target of a 50% reduction in national road crash fatalities. This is a difficult target for a country emerging from an economic crisis, but it has to be achieved. The government should consider launching a national initiative similar to the Clean Sri Lanka programme to reduce road accidents.