Augean stables

Wednesday 2nd February, 2022

Egg-throwing seems to be catching on. There have been three incidents where politicians came under egg attacks during the past few days. Pro-government goons have hurled eggs at JVP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, MP in Colombo and Gampaha. Pradeep Jayewardene, a member of the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), had rotten eggs thrown at him on Monday during a committee meeting of the council. The attacker, a female SLFP councillor, will face a disciplinary inquiry by her party besides a police investigation, we are told.

Nobody suffers injury in egg attacks, as is obvious, but all those who are responsible for the aforesaid incidents must be brought to justice if far worse incidents of political violence are to be prevented.

Egg attacks on the JVP leader may be a precursor to the re-emergence of state terror, the possibility of which cannot be ruled out, given what we witnessed during the previous Rajapakasa regime. Some ex-military personnel were involved in the Gampaha attack, according to the JVP, and therefore there is cause for concern, for their real mission may not be throwing eggs. It could be that the sinister elements are limbering up for something big.

Ironically, Pradeep Jayewardene, known as a decent politician, has become a victim of a rotten political culture his late grandfather President J. R. Jayewardene was instrumental in institutionalising. Under the Jayewardene regime, goons were given free rein; they even threw stones at the houses of upright Supreme Court judges who refused to give in to political pressure. They went scot-free thanks to political patronage. They also set upon the critics of the UNP government, and among their victims were intellectuals, trade unionists, Opposition politicians and others. Successive governments have nourished this culture of impunity so much so that there occur situations where even the Speaker of Parliament fears for his safety inside the very House, where laws are made.

The JVP has also made a tremendous contribution to the institutionalisation of political violence here especially through its reign of terror in the late 1980s, when its sparrow units mercilessly killed hundreds of people for exercising their democratic rights such as the freedom of expression and franchise. The SLFP were directly involved in goon attacks on its political rivals, and the TNA promoted LTTE terrorism openly.

The egg-throwing incident at the CMC has come as no surprise to those who have been watching politicians descend into savagery over the years and resort to violence even inside Parliament. In November 2018, following President Maithripala Sirisena’s abortive bid to oust the UNP-led government with the help of a section of the Opposition, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya had to be moved to safety as some MPs ran towards him menacingly. They would have either gheraoed or assaulted him but for swift action by the courageous parliamentary staff, and the police. Then the troublemakers hurled chilli powder and various projectiles at their ruling party counterparts and the police. Nobody was prosecuted for unleashing violence and damaging parliamentary property although complaints were lodged with the police, and irrefutable evidence was available to prove charges against the perpetrators of violence. Some of the culprits are Cabinet ministers today. No wonder the Opposition is coming under egg attacks and fear is being expressed in some quarters that bullets and bombs are likely to follow.

As CMC member Jayewardene’s nasty experience shows, three generations of Sri Lankans have already become victims of the rotten political culture plaguing the country, and it will go on until the end of time unless a concerted effort is made to discontinue it once and for all. The time has come for cleaning the Augean stables that Sri Lankan politics is. This is a task for all political parties that have sinned despite their pretence of innocence, and the onus is on civil society organisations, the media and the public to crank up pressure on them to do so. The awful spectre of political violence is looming over the country, again.