Just when you thought it cannot get any worse, it did.
That is the general public’s perception about the special presidential pardon accorded to R. Duminda Silva, former parliamentarian and convicted murderer.
The act of pardoning Silva is disgusting but not surprising at all. In fact, some are surprised that it has taken President Gotabaya Rajapaksa this long to sign off on the pardon.
The relationship between President Rajapaksa and Duminda Silva go back a long way. Silva entered Parliament in 2010. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was Defence Secretary at the time and Silva was appointed as the ‘Monitoring MP’ for the Defence Ministry.
Silva was convicted of murdering a Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) colleague, BharathaLakshman Premachandra, during the local government elections in 2011. It is well known that Silva, who was also injured in the incident, was flown to Singapore for medical treatment with Rajapaksa’s assistance.
Premachandra’s murder trial went the full distance. The order convicting Silva was given in a 2-1 verdict by the High Court. Silva’s legal team explored every possible legal option before a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court which however upheld his conviction in a unanimous decision in 2018. This should allay any aspersions cast on the decision to convict Silva. Premachandra’s daughter, HirunikaPremachandra was in the forefront of the struggle to get justice for her slain father and went on to become an outspoken parliamentarian herself.
The pardon granted by President Rajapaksa is emblematic of this regime. Importantly, it suggests that, despite the drubbing Mahinda Rajapaksa received at the hands of the electorate on January 8, 2015, the Rajapaksa’s have not learnt their lessons.
By 2010, the older Rajapaksa had a cult-like following in Sri Lanka. He had delivered a war victory against arguably the most ruthless terrorist organisation in the world, which few had thought possible. In doing so, not only did he withstand the pressures brought upon him by India and other western nations, he also did what the cunning of J.R. Jayewardene, the pragmatism of R. Premadasa and the charisma of Chandrika Kumaratunga couldn’t do.
Elevated to such an exalted status, Rajapaksa should have used that goodwill to address the ethnic grievances of all communities and put the nation on track towards economic and social prosperity. He didn’t.
Instead, he squandered his popularity by rewarding cronies who acted with impunity and immunity, with callous disregard for the law. By 2015, the nation had had enough of the Rajapaksas. He went from hero to zero and was booted out to Medamulana, on a helicopter lent to him by Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Unfortunately, Rajapaksa was not the only person who wasted a golden opportunity gifted to him- Wickremesinghe did too, so much so that by 2020, the people were yearning for the Rajapaksas to be at the helm again, thanks to the bickering between Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena, the Central Bank bond scam and the chilling message delivered by the Easter terror attacks that the country was unsafe again.
The Rajapaksas are now back in power and what do we get? More of the same: cronies doing as they pleased, law enforcement turning a blind eye, a system reeking of corruption so much so that ruling party henchmen are making money even out of the Covid-19 pandemic and a President who has been catapulted into the highest office only because he has the right surname being utterly insensitive to public opinion.
It is little wonder then that Gotabaya Rajapaksa pardons Duminda Silva. In fact, it would be quite surprising if he didn’t. As hard as it is for any right-thinking, law abiding citizen to stomach the pardon granted to Silva, what is more chilling is the underlying message it conveys.
It tells you that the President, armed as he is with a multitude of constitutional provisions- enhanced by the 20th Amendment- that pretty much allow him to act as he pleases, doesn’t care a whit about right and wrong, justice and fair play, the rule of law and, in general, what the public perception about him is, for even he, inexperienced as he is in the vagaries politics must know that pardoning Silva will not be a popular decision.
There has even been a suggestion that elder brother Mahinda, having been tempered in the cauldron of politics, is a tad more sensitive to public opinion than Gotabaya although it would be a stretch to say that he wouldn’t have pardoned Duminda Silva.
The President is also killing two birds with one stone here: he is sending a chilling message to the judiciary. He is blatantly disregarding a decision affirmed by a five-judge bench of the highest court in the land, effectively giving them a slap in the face and saying ‘No matter what the laws say, I do what I want’.
Judges, mere mortals that they are, are now at Rajapaksa’s mercy, the safeguards they had when the 19th Amendment was in force now being repealed by the 20th Amendment, and their appointments being at the President’s pleasure. It will be a either a very brave judge- or a very foolish one- that will now dare to cross the President’s path, when they deliver their next verdict.
The Rajapaksas are indeed repeating history here. They are now, slowly but surely, reinventing their corrupt oligarchy which was dismantled in 2015 and perhaps they will take it to even greater heights, having learnt the lessons of 2015 and now that Basil Rajapaksa has returned to steady the corrupt ship of state. The pardoning of Duminda Silva is only one symptom of this greater malaise.
Can it get any worse than this? Of course, it can. Unlike in 2015, the opposition is heavily fragmented now and the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) and the United National Party (UNP) are too busy trying to steal each other’s thunder, allowing the ruling ‘pohottuwa’ party get off scot free.
Don’t be surprised, therefore, if you see Duminda Silva return to Parliament, if not right now, at least at the next election, and take his seat alongside Premalal Jayasekara, the other convicted murderer in the ruling party’s ranks!
