Editorial

Police bashing

Published

5 years ago

2020/07/26

We publish in today’s issue of this newspaper two short contributions by retired policemen, one a letter to the editor and the other an article related to the department they had both long served. The matters they have focused on deserves both public reflection and governmental action. There is no doubt that corruption is deep-rooted in the police. This applies not only to our police force but also to forces elsewhere in the world. Denying this would be a blatant example of closing your eyes to reality. The article by retired Senior Superintendent Tassie Seneviratne, who began his career as a sub-inspector and retired from a senior gazetted rank, freely admits corruption in the force; nobody can deny that and denial has not been attempted. What is important is what is to be done about this problem that has long existed and grown exponentially as the years passed and both the population and size of the police grew.

Seneviratne says that there is no doubt that that the police has degenerated to abysmal depths and the reasons are not hard to find. It is not the police alone that is corrupt in our society. The disease is endemic throughout the government service and is worse in some departments than others; everybody knows this by personal experience. We are a majority Buddhist country and most of us parrot the five precepts – but how many of us truly observe them? This is also true of the Ten Commandments of Christianity. Both religions, and surely others as well, exhort their followers not to steal – do not take what is not given, Buddhism tells us, and ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ is a Christian commandment familiar to all whatever their religion.

The writer has headlined his contribution, which he says had input from a named retired DIG and we know from a former IGP, describing his former service as an institution that is most wanted and most despised by the people. Law and order is an essential requirement of life and the police is the enforcement agency. A major reason attributed to what the writer has called the “miserable lot of the police” today is the indiscriminate recruitment into the Police Reserve compelled by the war. As in the case of the military, the terrorism unleashed on this country by Prabhakaran – which rapidly deteriorated into a civil war – triggered heavy recruitment. This was done without due care and with little or no regard to qualifications and suitability mainly on political considerations. It wasn’t long before the Reserve, in terms of manpower, became as big as the regular force. Recruits without training received promotions “on their own standards,” Seneviratne says.

Then came the deluge. In 2006, the Special Police Reserve on the orders of the then President, was absorbed into the regular force in the ranks its members then held in the Reserve. This naturally created deep frustration in the regular police, especially in regard to seniority, which is the major consideration for promotion. Seneviratne says that the Reservists were not only totally unfit for the police but without proper training. They were untrained and undisciplined and some of them have risen to the ranks of ASP and SP. Even if absorbing of the Reservists to the regular force was a mistake, the bigger mistake was not giving them the required training even after induction. Today senior officials including the Defence Secretary, the Attorney General and cabinet ministers are heard berating the police for corruption and inefficiency. “Surely policemen are also human beings,” says Seneviratne, and there is no magic wand to wave and transform them into ideal police officers.

The question now is what senior officials, or for that matter the elected establishment and the National Police Commission created with great expectations, done to rectify the situation? Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa who, as the then president was responsible for the absorbing of the Special Police Reserve into the regular force, went on record recently saying at a public meeting that there was not enough recognition of politicians by the police. Seneviratne has interpreted this remark to mean that requests, sometimes orders, from politicians must be acted upon. He says that it is anybody’s guess whether such requests are lawful or not. As for the National Police Commission, the less said the better. It irretrievably recently tainted itself by backing special security measures including assignments of guards and drivers to retired IGPs and Senior DIG’s to keep in step with perks granted on retirement to senior military officers.

The letter to the editor from an officer who retired from the inspectorate takes umbrage at the likes of Karuna, once Eastern commander of the LTTE who defected, and KP who was a major fundraiser and custodian of Tiger loot, being allowed total freedom and high class lifestyles in post-war Sri Lanka; and there is barely a squeak about this from quarters that matter. Karuna, who recently set a cat among the canaries by claiming that he was responsible for the deaths of over a thousand soldiers at Elephant Pass, served as a deputy minister and was even a vice-president of the SLFP, is running for Parliament at the forthcoming election. The defense of those responsible for the special positions he enjoys today is that his defection from the LTTE was a major contribution for the defeat of the Tigers. Unsurprisingly, the requirement (or obligation) for policemen to salute him has turned many police stomachs.

Senior policemen, now retired, believe that overdue police reforms must be community driven. They cannot come from the government, the courts, the Attorney General or the National Police Commission. Public opinion, neither strident nor vocal, for change does exist. But who is going to bell the cat? The answer to that question does not appear to be forthcoming. Meanwhile the deterioration persists.

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Editorial

Executive brinkmanship

Published

14 hours ago

2025/12/28

Thilina Walpola

Pressure is mounting on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to ensure that an Auditor General is appointed without further delay. But he has remained unmoved. He is determined to wear down the Constitutional Council (CC) and appoint one of his party loyalists as Auditor General. The CC has rejected his nominees—and rightly so; they are not eligible. Former Executive Presidents went all out to railroad the CC into rubber-stamping their decisions. They had no qualms about doing so while claiming to uphold the independence of the public service. President Dissanayake has failed to be different. His refusal to compromise amounts to brinkmanship; he is waiting until the CC blinks.

The NPP’s election manifesto, A Thriving Nation: A Beautiful Life, attributes the deterioration of the public service to ‘political appointments’ and state workers making political decisions. Among the steps the NPP has promised to take to straighten up the public service are ‘merit-based appointments and promotions’. This principle has fallen by the wayside where the question of appointing the Auditor General is concerned.

The government should take cognisance of the possible negative effects of the prolonged delay in appointing the Auditor General during a period of disaster response and international relief and rebuilding support.

The Bar Association of Sri Lanka has called upon President Dissanayake to appoint a person with proven competence, integrity, and independence, who commands wide acceptance as Auditor General forthwith. It has stressed the need to appoint a nonpartisan professional as the Auditor General to safeguard the integrity of the National Audit Office and inspire the confidence of both citizens and international partners in the financial governance of the State.

Transparency International Sri Lanka, the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and the other good governance activists, too, have faulted President Dissanayake and his government for the inordinate delay in appointing the Auditor General. They are of the view that a strong, independent Auditor General enables Parliament and the public to scrutinise government expenditure, identify irregularities, prevent misuse of funds, and ensure that those entrusted with public resources are held to account. The delay in appointing the Auditor General has weakened the effectiveness, authority, and the independence of the entire public audit system and created space for inefficiency, mismanagement, and corruption, they have noted. The situation will take a turn for the worse if the government succeeds in having one of its cronies appointed Auditor General.

The government is apparently playing a waiting game in the hope that the reconstitution of the CC due next year will provide a window of opportunity for it to appoint one of its loyalists as Auditor General.

Why the government is so desperate to place a malleable person at the helm of the National Audit Office is not hard to understand. If it succeeds in its endeavour, the next Auditor General will be beholden to the JVP/NPP. When an ineligible person is elevated to a high post, he or she naturally becomes subservient to the appointing authority. Such officials go out of their way to safeguard the interests of their political masters in case of irregularities involving state funds and other accountability issues.

A protracted delay in appointing the Auditor General or the appointment of a government supporter to that post will increase the risk of mismanagement of state funds and corruption, lead to the erosion of public trust and confidence in the National Audit Office, undermine legislative oversight and impair fiscal discipline. Most of all, the government’s failure to appoint a competent, independent person of integrity as Auditor General will diminish donor confidence especially at a time when the country is seeking disaster relief funds from the international community. There is no way the government can justify its refusal to appoint the current Acting Auditor General as the head of the supreme audit institution. He is obviously the most eligible candidate.

Editorial

Selective transparency

Published

2 days ago

2025/12/27

Thilina Walpola

Saturday 27th December, 2025

The NPP government has released a cordial diplomatic letter from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and gained a great deal of publicity for it as part of a propaganda campaign to boost Dissanayake’s image. Such moves are not uncommon in politics, especially in the developing world, where the heads of powerful states are deified and their visits, invitations and letters are flaunted as achievements of the leaders of smaller nations. However, the release of PM Modi’s letter to President Dissanayake is counterproductive, for it makes one wonder why the government has not made public the MoUs it has signed with India?

PM Modi’s Sri Lanka visit in April 2025 saw the signing of seven MoUs (or pacts as claimed in some quarters) between New Delhi and Colombo. Prominent among them are the MoUs/pacts on the implementation of HVDC (High-Voltage Direct Current) Interconnection for import/export of power, cooperation among the governments of India, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates on developing Trincomalee as an energy hub, and defence cooperation between India and Sri Lanka.

The NPP government has violated one of the fundamental tenets of good governance––transparency; there has been no transparency about the aforesaid MoUs or pacts, especially the one on defence cooperation. They cannot be disclosed without India’s consent, the government has said. This is a very lame excuse. The JVP/NPP seems to have a very low opinion of the intelligence of the public, who made its meteoric rise to power.

When the JVP/NPP was in opposition, it would flay the previous governments for signing vital MoUs and pacts without transparency. But it has kept even Parliament in the dark about the MoUs/pacts in question.

Ironically, the JVP, which resorted to mindless violence in a bid to scuttle the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987, has sought to justify the inking of an MoU/pact on defence cooperation between Sri Lanka and India and keeping it under wraps, about three and a half decades later. The signing of that particular defence MoU/pact marked the JVP’s biggest-ever Machiavellian U-turn. How would the JVP have reacted if a previous government had entered into MoUs with India and kept them secret? It opposed the proposed Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) between Sri Lanka and India tooth and nail, didn’t it?

Whenever one sees the aforesaid letter doing the rounds in the digital space, one remembers the MoUs/pacts shrouded in secrecy, which have exposed the pusillanimity of the NPP government, whose leaders cannot so much as disclose their contents without India’s consent.

Editorial

Desperate political sandbagging

Published

3 days ago

2025/12/26

Thilina Walpola

Friday 26th December, 2025

There is nothing more predictable than surprise in politics. After securing a two-thirds majority in Parliament last year and emerging victorious in most local councils, this year, the JVP-led NPP may have thought that it was plain sailing. But the government now has many unforeseen, seemingly intractable issues to contend with almost on all fronts. The disaster-stricken economy is expected to slow down, with relief and rebuilding costs escalating, and the deadline for the resumption of debt repayment approaching. Vehicle imports are bound to decrease, causing a sharp drop in the government’s tax revenue. The rupee is depreciating fast. As if these were not enough, the government is experiencing serious problems on the political front.

The defeat of the NPP’s budget in the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), which the JVP/NPP seized control of through extensive horse trading, could not have come at a worse time for the government. The same fate has befallen many other NPP-controlled local councils. Most of all, the NPP has suffered a string of defeats in the cooperative society elections countrywide during the last several months.

Desperate times are said to call for desperate measures. Cyclone Ditwah and the attendant extreme weather events that badly damaged roads, tank bunds and river banks prompted repair teams to resort to sandbag revetment. But there have been many instances where sandbag facings collapsed, unable to withstand the intensity of floods and slope failures. The government politicians who boasted of having carried out swift restoration work have been left red-faced; they have failed to assess the severity of the problems they are trying to solve.

The NPP government has resorted to a method similar to sandbag revetment in a desperate bid to consolidate its control over some local councils which cannot secure the passage of their budgets for want of majorities. Its members have gone to the extent of setting the clock forward in such institutions, meeting in advance of the regular start time and declaring their budgets passed before the arrival of the Opposition councillors. What the NPP did in the Horana Urban Council the other day is a case in point, the Opposition says.

The NPP is accused of having inflated the number of votes for its Galle MC budget amidst a howl of protests from the Opposition and declared victory. The Opposition councillors prevented the council secretary from leaving the auditorium, put the budget to a fresh vote and defeated it. The Opposition has threatened legal action against the Mayors/Chairpersons and the state officials for violating the law. The government is likely to employ a similar method to have the CMC budget passed when it is put to a vote again next week. The JVP has no sense of shame, just like all other political parties that have been in power.

All self-righteous politicians, given to moral grandstanding, lay bare their true faces when their interests are threatened, and they face the prospect of losing their hold on power. The JVP/NPP is now without any right to be critical of its rivals who did not scruple to undermine democratic principles and traditions to retain power.

Gaining control of hung local councils is one thing, but running them to the satisfaction of their members and the public is quite another. The non-majority councils that the Opposition parties have gained control of could face the same fate as the CMC. This situation has come about because the country is without patriotic leaders. Ideally, the political parties that obtained pluralities in the hung councils should have been allowed to control those institutions, and they should have adopted a conciliatory approach and sought their political rivals’ cooperation to serve the public.

The shameful manner in which the NPP acted during the Galle MC budget vote is not unprecedented. One may recall that in January 2024, the SLPP-UNP government did something similar to secure the passage of its despicable Online Safety Bill. The then Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena stooped so low as to make use of a brawl in the House and declare the Bill passed. Interestingly, the SLPP and the UNP are among those who are raking the NPP over the coals for undermining democratic principles and traditions. So much for the self-proclaimed messiahs and their critics.