By Kassapa
When J. R. Jayewardene, after a lifetime in politics, planned and plotted his victory in 1977, he had a vision. He would develop the country as no one ever before did. However, he wanted something in return: he saw himself at the helm for at least a decade with no one to challenge his authority. Towards this end, he had two strategies: politically incapacitate his main rival Sirima Bandaranaike and also enact a Constitution which would make him Executive President with near absolute powers.
With years of political experience behind him, Jayewardene had seen the two major parties at that time, the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) exchange power every five years with near clockwork precision. He wanted none of that. To ensure this, he knew he needed to command absolute loyalty from politicians. An important tool in ensuring this was the ability to grant pardons: to anyone, for anything, if he so wished. Thus was introduced Article 34 to the Sri Lankan Constitution.
But power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the famous saying goes. So, most who held the office of Executive President have used presidential pardons for their advantage. Jayewardene himself was severely criticised for pardoning Sunil Perera alias ‘Gonawela Sunil’. Casting aside all aspersions of conflict of interest, Mahinda Rajapaksa pardoned Mary Juliet Monica Fernando, the wife of his Cabinet minister Milroy Fernando who was convicted of murdering her husband’s paramour. Rajapaksa also pardoned his erstwhile Cabinet colleague S. B. Dissanayake.
If these were examples of unethical behaviour by the Executive President, Maithripala Sirisena and Mahinda’s brother Gotabaya took pardoning to a new low. After pardoning Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara thero who had been convicted of contempt of court Sirisena pardoned Royal Park murderer Jude Shramantha Jayamaha. Not to be outdone, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, after pardoning Sunil Ratnayake, an Army officer who was convicted of the horrible Mirusuvil murders, pardoned his former ‘Monitoring MP’, Duminda Silva who had been convicted of the murder of Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra.
As we now know, the pardons granted to Jayamaha by Sirisena and Silva by Gotabaya Rajapaksa were illegal. The Supreme Court held that the pardon to Jayamaha was unconstitutional and ordered Sirisena to pay a million rupees for his lapse. Silva’s pardon did not follow the due process, the Supreme Court held, and returned Silva to prison.
All of this is recent history, history which presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake used to regale audiences with during his presidential and general election campaigns less than a year ago. Dissanayake pledged to stop this nonsense and clip the President’s wings when he assumed office. The people believed him and voted him into office.
That is why the opposition would have been rubbing its collective hands in glee when they found that a person from Anuradhapura, Dissanayake’s home turf, who had been convicted of a financial crime ten days earlier had been pardoned for Vesak. They smelled a political rat here and the inference was that Dissanayake was no different: he too must have been misusing presidential pardons. Namal Rajapaksa said as much. As President, the second-generation Rajapaksa said, Dissanayake must “value” his signature. What the Department of Prisons had to say didn’t help Dissanayake either; the pardon was nothing exceptional and due process had been followed, they said.
Taken by surprise, the top tier in the government was livid. They were quick to note that Dissanayake had not signed a pardon for the convict at the centre of the controversy. An immediate investigation was launched to find out how he came to be pardoned. The findings of that probe were startling: not only this gentleman but several others too may have been pardoned at the behest of the Prisons Department. Its Superintendent of the Anuradhapura Prison as well as its Commissioner General were arrested and have been remanded.
Dissanayake himself alluded to this and pointed out that three of the country’s top officials- the Inspector General of Police, the Controller of Immigration and now the Commissioner General of Prisons- are now behind bars or are out on bail. There is a lesson to be learnt from that, for the government.
For at least two decades, Sri Lankan officialdom had been nurtured on a steady diet of political patronage. Officials did whatever the ruling party wanted and in return, politicians turned a blind eye to the misdemeanours of top bureaucrats. This was so when the two Rajapaksas ruled and it was also true during the Sirisena and Wickremesinghe eras, albeit to different degrees. Politicians came and went but the bureaucracy has remained corrupt. Cleaning this up is a Herculean task and this is what Dissanayake and his government are up against.
It won’t be an easy battle. Had this government also subscribed to the ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’ principle, officials would have been eager to abandon their previous their political masters and align themselves with the new order. With no such avenue available, officialdom is hoping the government will get burnt out and will be sent home at the next major national elections. They are willing to lie low until that happens. To prevent this from becoming a reality, Dissanayake and his government must investigate and punish officials whenever their corrupt acts come to light.
As for the opposition, while they played their role in bringing this issue into the limelight, they also jumped the gun in this instance, attempting to impute ulterior motives to Dissanayake in this so-called ‘pardon’. For those such as Namal Rajapaksa, it was yet another opportunity to showcase their political immaturity, talking about Dissanayake valuing his signature, when in fact, there was no signature at all.
It is hoped the government will get to the bottom of the pardon scandal and not allow it to be swept under the carpet by the next news story that will emerge next week. The moral of the story for the government is to assume that “officials are corrupt, top officials are absolutely corrupt” at least for now.
