Subsidised meals and police guards

There was a babble of righteous indignation when new MPs elected to the incumbent Parliament were told during an orientation session that meals served to them at the Diyawanna restaurant cost the taxpayer a cool three thousand bucks per meal though they paid only a relative pittance for what they ate. The figure, which seemed highly unlikely, was later corrected to say that a fish meal cost Rs. 950 to provide while a vegetarian meal cost Rs. 629 with MPs charged Rs. 200 per meal. In a previous comment on this subject, we said that the chances are that the entire food bill in the legislature appears to have been divided by 225 (the number of MPs) to reach the astronomical figure although it is not only the legislators who eat in Parliament. Numerous officials, policemen, the press and sundry others eat there as well knowing that they are being treated to a highly subsidized meal. Although the

Speaker promised to go into the matter and report back, nothing further was heard on the subject. So the people remain ignorant on the true situation and quite willing to believe the worst.

Now the question of the security offered to parliamentarians has cropped up with a couple of Samagi Jana Balavegaya MPs saying that two police guards assigned to them is insufficient. Former Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa, now charged with the responsibility Irrigation, Internal Security, Home Affairs and Disaster Management seems to have struck a responsive chord in the public mind saying that policemen will not be deployed “to carry files and bags of MPs.” He might have added “or answer telephones” because that is also a common chore falling on those cops assigned to security details of parliamentarians. From what the Minister said, the previous four policemen per MP has now been reduced to two and the government did not seem inclined, rightly we believe, to increase this. But there were no questions asked about numbers assigned to “special cases” including ministers, opposition personalities, and former presidents. The minister will surely be embarrassed to reveal the facts as well as the names of the privileged few.

Rajapaksa explained that it was necessary to substantially increase the protection granted to MPs, during the JVPs second adventure in the late eighties when several MPs and other political activists were literally bumped off in cold blood. There were so many of them including several MPs from both sides of the fence and others like Vijaya Kumaranatunga who might have become President as his widow, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaranatunga, did some years later, Apart from the MPs there were well known trade unionists like PD Wimalasena of the LSSP and LW Panditha of the CP. Other names that readily come to mind include Nandalal Fernando, General Secretary of the UNP and that party’s Chairman Harsha Abeywardene. Older readers might remember the grenade which did not explode flung at Dr. Colvin. R. de Silva through a verandah grill at his Kollupitiya home late in the night.

Then came the LTTE threat which was much more fearsome than its JVP predecessor with the Tigers responsible for the assassination of no less than Rajiv Gandhi, President Premadasa, Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, Gamini Dissanayake, Lalith Athulathmudali, Ministers Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, CV Gooneratne, Ranjan Wijeratne and many more including a large number of Tamil MPs including TULF leaders like Messrs. A. Amirthalingam, M. Sivasithamparam and Tamil Congress Leader Kumar Ponnambalam. Naturally, as Minister Chamal Rajapaksa said, huge resources had to be thrown into protect national leaders and other vulnerable persons at that time. President Chandrika Kumaratunga lost an eye and barely escaped with her life in the last campaign rally she addressed prior to her re-election. An icy chill will run down the spines of all those who remember those terror-filled days. Both the JVP and LTTE terror resulted in an ever ballooning security apparatus like the Presidential, Prime Ministerial and Ministerial Security Divisions of the Police. There are necessarily special units also, like diplomatic protection. Thousands of policemen are assigned for such duties at the expense of regular law enforcement.

The extent of VIP security is usually based on threat perception. But even with such perception going sky high, as in the case of Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar, and the massive resources deployed, it was not possible to save him from the LTTE sniper who put a bullet through his head having patiently bided his time for probably months. The assassin had been holed up in the unused upper floor of a neighboring residence whose occupants did not know what was going on in a part of their house they never visited. Kadirgamar, typically, did not wish his neighbors harassed in any way and that resulted in his personal security personnel not running a fine tooth comb as they well might have had they not been prevented from so doing.

We say all this in the context of the reality that electors generally react adversely to the perks heaped on representatives sent by them particularly to Parliament. Thus the media is able to raise a great hoo haa about what their MPs are able to eat in the House restaurant and at what price. People naturally rile against security squads, sometimes converted to virtual private armies during extraordinary times, and white-gloved soldiers in VIP motorcades shooing people off the roads to make way for the high and mighty to speed by. The JVP insurrection and the civil war naturally bloated the security apparatus but does it need to remain so for all time now that the threats are gone?