Thursday 20th March, 2025

The police have found their ‘head’ at long last, but they’ve lost face. Their much-publicised manhunt for IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon came a cropper. Having been in hiding for 20 days, he surrendered to the Matara Magistrate’s court yesterday and was remanded.

The government sought to save face by claiming, in Parliament, yesterday that Tennakoon had surrendered while a CID team was in Matara to obtain a court order to freeze his assets. It also said the CID had conducted a thorough search of his house the previous day and taken into custody a large number of bottles of liquor, a small firearm, and two mobile phones. It would have the public believe that such actions scared Tennakoon into giving himself up. However, there is reason to believe that Tennakoon surrendered because his last-ditch attempt to have the arrest warrant for him stayed by the Court of Appeal failed.

It is now up to the CID to ascertain from Tennakoon where he was hiding and who helped him evade arrest for almost three weeks. The act of aiding and abetting the evasion of arrest is a punishable offence, as is public knowledge. The police are known to arrest the family members of the suspects they fail to arrest. One may recall that they took into custody the mother and another family member of Ishara Sewwandi, an accomplice of the killer of Gannemulle Sanjeewa. Acting on a tip-off, they arrested the shooter within a few hours of the incident, but Sewwandi has been on the run since 19 Feb., and the search for her has drawn a blank.

Tennakoon’s illegal behaviour has been a black mark on the police, who have also blotted their copybook by failing to arrest him. How can they be expected to catch the masterminds behind serious crimes, such as terror attacks?

In 2024, the then President Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed Tennakoon IGP amidst protests. His action made the SLPP-UNP government even more unpopular, and it is believed that the previous administration launched Operation Yukthiya against the underworld in a bid to shore up its crumbling image and justify Tennakoon’s appointment as IGP. There were many complaints of police excesses and fundamental rights violations during that operation. However, there was a pressing need for an all-out effort to neutralise the criminal gangs engaged in drug trafficking, contract killing, armed robberies, etc., but Yukthiya became a kind of political circus. There has been a steep rise in underworld activities since last year’s regime change. Hardly a day passes without a fatal shooting somewhere, but the police are doing precious little to stem the crime wave.

Tennakoon should not have been appointed IGP, but the previous regime needed someone who was willing to do its bidding unquestioningly. There were serious allegations against him including wrongful arrests, obstructing police investigations, failure to prevent the Easter Sunday terror attacks, threatening journalists, and attacking protesters. Above all, in December 2023, the Supreme Court, in a historic judgement, held Tennakoon responsible for torture. Not even that apex court judgement deterred the SLPP-UNP government from making Tennakoon the police chief.

There are lessons that the current police top brass should learn from their predecessors’ mistakes, especially those of Tennakoon. Unless they refrain from compromising their professional integrity to commit excesses and/or do politicians’ dirty work, they, too, will face the same fate as Tennakoon.

Wednesday 19th March, 2025

Some health sector trade unions launched a 24-hour strike yesterday, aggravating the suffering of the sick who visited the state-run hospitals seeking treatment. The protesting workers have said they were left with no alternative but to resort to trade union action as the Health Ministry had not heeded their grievances, the main being that their take-home salaries will decrease despite the government’s claim that it has granted them pay hikes.

A strike in one sector tends to have a domino effect on others, and trade union disputes have the potential to snowball. It will therefore be prudent for the government to address the root causes of the health sector labour struggles expeditiously. Health Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa has, in his wisdom, opted for a game of chicken, hoping that the trade unions on the warpath will back down. Ironically, some pro-government trade unions which were accused of resorting to unfair industrial action, while the JVP was in the opposition, are berating the health sector strikers!

The government has asked the protesting health workers not to hold patients to ransom. Its call will resonate with the ordinary people dependent on free healthcare, but it will have to do much more if the problem at hand is to be solved once and for all. Ideally, vital sectors such as health should be free from strikes, but the governments do not take action to redress workers’ grievances unless trade unions resort to industrial action.

Most of the protesting trade unions backed the NPP in the last two elections, believing in the latter’s promises. Many Sri Lankans, including state employees, ‘barter’ their votes for the benefits promised by political parties in the run-up to an election. Problems occur when governments fail to fulfil their pledges after being ensconced in power.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, before presenting the NPP government’s maiden budget in Parliament, promised ‘unprecedented pay hikes’ for all public employees. When he, in his capacity as the Minister of Finance, announced salary increases through Budget 2025, it was made out to be a generous gesture, but the health sector trade unions are of the view that it was just a sleight of hand. The government succeeded in having a doctors’ strike put on hold by promising to effect changes to the budget during the committee stage to sort out issues pertaining to their salaries. The doctors will resume their trade union action unless the government fulfils its pledge. The government will be in trouble even if it manages to resolve the doctors’ pay issues, for other trade unions will demand that their grievances be redressed in a similar manner.

The NPP government is in the current predicament mostly due to over-promising and under-delivering. Interestingly, the JVP, whose trade unions would resort to industrial action at the drop of a hat during previous governments, is now inveighing against strikers. One may recall that the JVP opposed a worker’s struggle in 1980, when it pulled out of a general strike at the eleventh hour. The other leftist parties that organised the labour struggle claimed the JVP had acted at the behest of the UNP, which it was honeymooning with at that time. The J. R. Jayewardene government crushed the strike in the most brutal manner; UNP goons were unleashed on strikers, one of whose leaders was killed. About 45,000 strikers were sacked, and some of them committed suicide. The pro-UNP labour unions vehemently condemned the strikers. Four and a half decades on, the JVP trade unions are doing likewise!

The NPP has raised workers’ expectations to a level where it cannot manage them. It promised biannual pay hikes, coupled with a substantial increase in the cost of living allowance. Thus, it garnered favour with the state workers, who voted overwhelmingly for it in last year’s elections. Now, it is under pressure to make good on its promises. This reminds us of a conversation in Achebe’s No Longer at Ease; the protagonist, a young civil servant, is told by another that the problem is not taking bribes but failing to do what they are taken for. The NPP government has failed to do what the state workers who voted for it expected in return—substantial pecuniary benefits.

Meanwhile, let the warring trade unions be urged to ensure that their members earn their keep, and comply with the rules and regulations governing their institutions. About 213 biometric attendance machines installed in state-run health institutions at a cost of Rs. 31 million remain unused due to trade union resistance. Those who refuse to use these machines do not deserve to be paid with state funds.

Tuesday 18th March, 2025

Sri Lanka has been described as a country like no other. This description is not far-fetched. The government of Sri Lanka has tabled in Parliament an old presidential commission report that serves as a self-indictment, and the Police Department is still looking for its ‘head’. The Court of Appeal has rejected IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon’s petition seeking an interim injunction against an arrest order. The Batalanda Commission report, tabled by the JVP-led NPP government in Parliament contains some damning observations about the JVP’s reign of terror in the 1980s!

Allegations of torture and judicial executions could not have resurfaced at a worse time for the UNP and its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. The much-delayed local government elections are on the horizon. The UNP has sought to pooh-pooh the Batalanda Commission report. Its supporters and other detractors of the JVP would have the public believe that the report is not worth the paper it is written on. They are busy trying to remind the public of the JVP’s terror campaign in the late 1980s. The Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), which is demanding justice for the Batalanda victims and legal action against the perpetrators of torture, is doing its darndest to conceal the fact that its leaders were actively involved in the JVP’s terror campaign during the 1987-89 period.

The JVP finds itself in the same predicament as the proverbial tippler, who dived headfirst into a poorly-lit swimming pool at night only to realise halfway through the plunge that it had been emptied. Let it be repeated that the Batalanda Commission report refers to the JVP’s crimes as well, and therefore it can be argued that the JVP has admitted to its past crimes, albeit unwittingly, by tabling that document in Parliament. Some of the current JVP and FSP stalwarts were in the JVP’s military wing, which committed heinous crimes during the 1987-89 period, in the name of their macabre cause, which the JVP has now forsaken as evident from the incumbent government’s policy programme. These characters will have to be prosecuted if a proper probe based on the findings of the Batalanda Commission gets underway.

The Batalanda Commission report says, inter alia: “As a result of terrorist activities of the JVP, hundreds of politicians, political activists, police officers and civilians were murdered. Terrorist activities affected the normal functioning of state organisations and in certain instances essential services were crippled thus causing immense hardships to the public. Hence, the situation was in fact extraordinary. It nearly led to a state of anarchy.” The Commission goes on to say, “It is noted with regret that the then government in fact resorted to extrajudicial methods to curb the spate of terrorism perpetuated by the JVP. The terrorism of the JVP was met with state terrorism.” One cannot but agree with the Batalanda Commission on this point. Both the UNP and the JVP must be held accountable for the savage crimes that shook the country in the late 1980s.

The Batalanda commission report has also shed light on the JVP’s political promiscuity and its readiness to sacrifice its socialist ideology at the altar of expediency. It says: “By the time the 1977 General Elections were declared, the peripheral organizers of the JVP were active, and in fact went to the extent of directly supporting the United National Party, which had been during that period classified as a right-wing capitalist force.” Thus, the JVP was instrumental in creating the monster that preyed on its leaders and cadres several years later. In 2015, it honeymooned with the UNP again, and in 2018, it saved the UNP-led government of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, whom it is now demonising.

In the early 1990s, complaints abounded about the Batalanda torture chamber, and they should have been probed and the culprits brought to justice immediately after the 1994 regime change. But the SLFP-led People’s Alliance government and President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga did not go all out to do so. Instead, Kumaratunga appointed the Batalanda Commission, whose report is full of flaws and lacks clarity. This may have been the main reason why the Kumaratunga government stopped short of initiating an investigation based on it.

Past crimes, however, have their own way of catching up with their perpetrators. The unfolding political drama, based on a 25-year-old presidential commission report, is a case in point. One can only hope that all those responsible for terror and excesses committed in the name of counterterror operations in the late 1980s will be made to pay for their crimes.