Friday 10th May, 2024

Derrick Borte’s edge-of-seat psychological thriller, ‘Unhinged’, has an appropriate tagline: ‘He can happen to anyone!’ We were reminded of this suspense flick full of gratuitous violence, and its catchphrase while reading newspaper reports that former Minister Mervyn Silva had recently been granted bail in a case pertaining to an incident which took place at the state-owned Rupavahini Corporation headquarters 17 years ago. The police must be asked to explain why they took so long to institute legal action against him. The mere mention of his name evokes dreadful memories of a dark era, when pro-government goons operated even alongside the police to crush political dissent and were free to kill anyone and carry out arson attacks.

The Sri Lanka police are known for their high-octane performance. They swing into action, arrest offenders and haul them up before court in double quick time. But they do so only when the culprits happen to be members of the marginalised sections of society, such as poor children who steal coconuts, unable to dull the pangs of hunger or pay school fees. These ‘brave’ men in uniform cringe and cower before powerful politicians and politically-connected thugs. That is why Mervyn and the members of his private army, who did dirty work for the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, remained above the law. It may be recalled that Mervyn tied a public official to a tree in full view of the police, in 2010, for being late to a meeting he had summoned. No action was taken against him for that serious offence.

In 2007, Mervyn and some thugs stormed the Rupavahini headquarters, demanding to know why a speech he had made in Matara, a few days before, insulting Mangala Samaraweera, had not been telecast. He turned aggressive only to be gheraoed and roughed up by the irate Rupavahini workers. It was a case of the hunter being hunted, and the police had to step in to secure the release of Mervyn and his netherworld chums.

The Rajapaksa government, true to form, defended Mervyn to the hilt. It was the Rupavahini workers who were interrogated by the police over the 2007 incident! A few months later, some of them came under knife attacks and the victims suffered in silence.

The culture of political violence and impunity is far from over, and the blame for this sorry state of affairs should be apportioned to successive governments and their leaders as well as others who have used violence as a means to achieve their political goals.

Dangerous underworld figures such as Kalu Lucky and Gonawala Sunil carried out attacks on the political opponents of the J. R. Jayewardene government, suppressed the media, stoned judges’ houses and stuffed ballot boxes; the Ranasinghe Premadasa administration had underworld armies led by the likes of Soththi Upali to suppress democratic dissent, terrorise the Opposition and the media, and rig elections. The Chandrika Kumaratunga government, which came to power promising to eliminate political violence, used criminals such as Beddegana Sanjeewa and the Presidential Security Division personnel to terrorise and harm its opponents; the Rajapaksa regime had many underworld figures such as Wambotta to crush protests and attack opposition activists, journalists and media organisations. In the late 1980s, the JVP used numerous sparrow units to carry out political assassinations, and its ‘enforcer’, Lionel Ranasinghe, killed 41 persons including Vijaya Kumaratunga, according to his confession to the police, published verbatim in Dharman Wickremaratne’s book, ‘Comrade Lionel’. The TNA defended the LTTE, acted as its mouthpiece, and sought to justify its terror.

Pareto has said that when a regime change occurs one set of elites is replaced by another, and he has called this process ‘the circulation of elites’. It can be argued that something similar happens in the underworld with criminal gangs replacing one another when regime changes occur. Mervyn switched his allegiance to President Maithripala Sirisena, who promised to usher in good governance, after the fall of the Rajapaksa government in 2015. Today, he is one of the bitterest critics of the Rajapaksas, whose slippers he once offered to lick to prove his loyalty to them.

Different as all political parties that have been in power or are seeking to savour it may be, in some respects, a common denominator among them is their readiness to resort to violence to protect self-interest. As for the upcoming elections, the Sri Lankan public has been left with a choice between some capitalist parties that do not hesitate to unleash violence to protect their interests and a bunch of pseudo-Marxists who are unrepentant about their past crimes.