Lohan Ratwatte: What will be will be

State Minister Lohan Ratwatte’s wild behaviour at the Anuradhapura prison last week has triggered universal condemnation and rightly so. He has tendered his resignation from one of his ministries, Prison Management and Prisoner Rehabilitation, but not from his position at the Ministry of Gems and Jewellery related industries prompting The Island to editorially describe him as a “gem of a minister!” But chuckles apart, the public continues to be kept in the dark about much of this horrific incident. For instance, was his resignation accepted by the president a command performance or did he, admitting culpability for gross misbehaviour, volunteer to resign? Either way more questions arise. If his departure from the prisons portfolio was on demand, why was he not asked to quit his second state ministry? If he volunteered the resignation, why was he not told to go the whole hog and give up gems and jewellery as well because he has amply demonstrated that he is totally unsuitable to hold public office.

Getting Tamil prisoners held in the Anuradhapura Prison under terrorism laws produced before him at the prison, brandishing a revolver at their faces, getting at least two of them to kneel before him and threatening to kill them was preceded by another incident at the Welikada Prison in Colombo where he and a group of friends including a woman, allegedly under the influence of liquor, had paid a late night visit and inspected the gallows. Apparently the authorities there had done nothing to restrain him, adopting the all too common ehei hamuduruwaney approach and letting him have his way. If anybody at Welikada had the guts to stand in his way, the Anuradhapura incident probably would not have happened. Unfortunately only very few public servants today stand up to political authorities and do their jobs without fear or favour. The whole country is paying a price for that. The few instances where public officials do stand their ground in confrontations with politicians are so rare that when that does happen, it’s headline grabbing news. So it was when a woman official of the Wild Life Department resisted an effort to destroy a mangrove.

There is some small consolation that Ratwatte has gone from prisons. Most people would believe that he should have gone into prison but that’s way too much to expect in this Democratic Socialist Republic of ours. Mr. Dew Gunasekera, a former Minister of Prisons and leader of the Communist Party, a constituent of the ruling SLPP, went on record on Friday that a cover-up was underway. Be that as it may, Ratwatte who had initially said that an investigation would reveal the truth, had since come out strongly breaking his silence and claiming he has “stopped the prisons from burning” according to Friday’s Daily Mirror. This report quoted him asking “Am I stupid to threaten prisoners?”, claiming he “never touched Tamil prisoners.” Admitting he had visited the Welikada gallows, he had claimed he had gone alone on an inspection and was not intoxicated. Ratwatte says the truth will be revealed to the president and prime minister. Newspapers well know that there are two sides to every story. But hackneyed as the cliché may be, it is nevertheless true that there’s no smoke without a fire. Both sides have now had their say so let us see how the drama will further unfold.

Much of the blame for the untoward incidents involving politicians can be laid at the door of leaders of most parties. They are too often guilty of running undesirable candidates on their party lists enabling them to get elected. The proportional representation (PR) system of elections that President J.R. Jayewardene imposed on this country through his 1978 constitution better enables undesirables to enter the legislature than under the previous constituency system. There is no gainsaying that there are pluses and minuses under both systems. PR prevents national political parties that have polled 30 and 40 percent of the vote at an election from being totally wiped out in landslides such as those we saw in 1970 and 1977. Of course there are exceptions such as what happened the last time round when the UNP was reduced to zero despite PR. The explanation for that was the Ranil – Sajith split. JRJ used his five sixths majority of 1977 to ensure that nobody got a two thirds majority enabling constitutional amendments in the future. But that has now been proved wrong.

The mere fact that somebody who’s charged in a court of law is discharged or acquitted does not necessarily mean he or she is not guilty. There are many reasons why prosecutions fail – shoddy investigations and prosecution, influencing witnesses, able defence counsel and many more. The conviction rate in Sri Lanka is a mere four to six percent according to published figures but we all know what the crime rate is. It is not only in this country that dicey characters get elected both to Parliament and lower down. India is much worse with as many as 43% of its Lok Sabha MPs having criminal records. The chances are that some kind of committee of inquiry will be appointed to investigate allegations against Lohan Ratwatte. This is akin to the pithy Sinhala idiom horage ammagen pena ahanawa (asking the thief’s mother about his whereabouts). The committee of UNP lawyers who them Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed to investigate the bond scam is recent enough to be remembered. We won’t bet serious money or even petty cash that any government appointed investigation will hold against Ratwatte.