Friday 27th September, 2024

The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday ordered that Controller General of Emigration and Immigration Harsha Ilukpitiya be remanded for contempt of court. It noted that evidence before it indicated that Ilukpitiya had chosen not to implement its order suspending a Cabinet decision that had granted approval for a controversial online visa scheme; it was duty-bound to uphold the rule of law and maintain the dignity of the judiciary.

The SC has once again gladdened the hearts of all Sri Lankans who cherish the rule of law. Ilukpitiya may not have anticipated a long haul in a remand prison when he acted in defiance of the SC order at issue while the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government was in power. Perhaps, the contemptuous manner in which the then President Ranil Wickremesinghe and his Cabinet treated the judiciary may have emboldened Ilukpitiya to disregard the SC directive in the mistaken belief that he would be safe.

President Wickremesinghe, his ministers and some ordinary MPs used to undermine the SC, and even sought to have several judges summoned before the parliamentary Privileges Committee for having given some bold judgements that were not to their liking. The fact that some powerful politicians carried out such virulent attacks on the judiciary with impunity thanks to their parliamentary privileges and executive powers may have misled some high-ranking state officials into thinking that they could ignore court orders, and their political bosses would defend them. They should have realised that they would have to face the consequences of their commissions and omissions because their political masters would not be in power indefinitely.

It is heartening that the SC has acted decisively once again to defeat sinister attempts made by some politicians and their bureaucratic lackeys to undermine the judiciary. Wednesday’s SC order has driven home the message that noncompliance with judicial decisions will not be tolerated on any grounds. Others of Ilukpitiya’s ilk in the public service would do well to realise that they run the risk of suffering painful gavel blows and languishing in remand prisons if they commit transgressions at the behest of their political bosses.

The online visa scam is before the SC, and the matter is best left to the learned judges. One however cannot but wonder why the masterminds behind the multi-billion-dollar racket have not been arrested yet. In this country, no mega scam can be carried out without the blessings of the ruling party politicians.

The names of the UNP politicians who masterminded the Treasury bond scams during the Yahapalana government (2015-2019) were not even mentioned in the probe reports thereon, as suspects, and those rackets were blamed solely on some state officials including the then Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran. Some SLPP heavyweights should have been arrested over the sugar tax fraud, which cost the state coffers billions of rupees during the early stages of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s rule.

The JVP/NPP won the recently concluded presidential election on an anti-corruption platform. Its leaders vowed ad nauseam that they would not allow the corrupt politicians in the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government to be spared, and all those responsible for the visa scams, etc., would be brought to justice. It is therefore incumbent upon newly elected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to ensure that legal action is taken immediately against the politicians who masterminded the visa racket. The people who voted for him, enabling him to achieve his presidential dream, may not expect him to make good on all his election pledges soon, especially the promise to grant them economic relief. But there are some election pledges that he must carry out forthwith. The politicians involved in the visa racket must be probed without further delay and arrested, if necessary, lest they should cover their tracks or even leave the country the way Mahendran did during the Yahapalana government.