Monsters and Masters

Monday 20th September, 2021

No sooner had Hambantota Mayor Eraj Fernando (SLFP) been arrested yesterday for trespassing on a land in Bambalapitiya recently and assaulting two security personnel guarding the property than he was given police bail. It looks as if the police had been eagerly waiting for his arrival to grant him bail! He is sure to come out with a tall tale in bid to justify his unlawful action. This is not the first time he has allegedly committed trespass. In November 2020, a video circulated on social media showed him and his men engaged in a brawl with some persons over a land dispute in Nugegoda. He sought to justify his action, and received kid glove treatment from the police.

The Rajapaksas have created quite a few monsters, who enjoy unbridled freedom to violate the law of the land. During the previous Rajapaksa government, Fernando, as the Mayor of Hambantota, tried to harm a group of UNP MPs, who visited the Hambantota Port and the Mattala Airport. He was shown on television, carrying a small firearm and chasing the MPs, who luckily managed to escape. He got away with his crime; his political masters claimed he had been brandishing a toy pistol! After President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s defeat in 2015, he switched his allegiance to the yahapalana government, and joined the SLFP. Thanks to an SLPP-SLFP deal, he is back in power and going berserk with impunity.

One should not lose sight of the big picture—the issue of land grabbing. Nobody’s property is safe. Organised gangs with links to powerful politicians prepare forged deeds for bare lands or unoccupied houses. The victims are helpless. Mervyn of Kelaniya was able to grab or destroy properties at will by virtue of being a member of the previous Rajapaksa government. He, too, turned his back on his political masters, nay insulted them after the latter’s fall in 2015. His criminal actions and illegally acquired assets have not been investigated although his erstwhile masters are back in power. Maybe they do not want to open a can of worms by probing his crimes. If the yahapalana government had cared to investigate him, it would have been able to uncover the crimes he had committed at the behest of his masters, but the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration did not go to that extent for obvious reasons. Former President Maithripala Sirisena and former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe are benefiting from the quid pro quo; the incumbent Rajapaksa government is looking after their interests as well as those of their supporters. Fernando’s release on police bail is a case in point.

Nawala Nihal, known as the God Father of Sri Lanka’s underworld, grabbed lands in Colombo, and many people had to pay him protection money. He operated freely under several governments obviously due to his political connections. Landowners in Colombo must have heaved a sigh of relief when he disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 2006, never to be sighted ever again. But the problem is far from over.

Land grabbing goes on in different parts of the country, and many victims are wary of having recourse to the law for fear of reprisal. Sri Lanka’s laws notoriously favour land grabbers and other such lawbreakers. Land cases drag on for decades and are prohibitively expensive. On 17 August, 2010, the then Justice Minister Athauda Seneviratne revealed in Parliament that it took as long 40 years for some land cases to be concluded!

Land racketeers also have the blessings of corrupt police officers, pettifoggers, and some venal Land Registry officials, and therefore, the victims are helpless. Greedy politicians and their thugs take advantage of this situation. There has to be a special police unit to probe complaints of land grabs expeditiously and action must be taken to have such cases heard speedily for the benefit of the hapless victims.

As for the likes of Fernando, the onus is on the current leaders to clean up the mess they themselves have created. When Mayors enjoy unbridled freedom to trespass, storm vaccination centres and obstruct health officials (in Moratuwa), destroy historical monuments (in Kurungeala), it is only natural that ministers think they should be able to commit far more serious offences with impunity such as barging into prisons and trying to execute inmates.