CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Crime and punishment
Neville de Silva charts how Sri Lanka is faring under a new government facing some of the same old problems, and new ones too
‘I’m afraid there is no money’, an outgoing British Labour MP once famously said. Today, in Sri Lanka, there is also ashortage of state funds, pilfered by politicians and bureaucrats. Some of the loot is lying in banks here and abroad, state investigations and leaks from other sources indicate.
This kind of pilferage has been going on for decades, despite democratic changes of government, pointing to a serious system failure where one dog is unwilling to bite the other, lest that then becomes a political necessity.
Over the years Sri Lanka has tried to attract foreign investment, be it foreign direct investment, private foreign capital and even Sri Lankan capital from those domiciled abroad. The aim was to build a healthy economy with some of the attributes of Singapore, Malaysia and, more recently, Vietnam serving as models
These Asian countries entered long after Sri Lanka breasted the tape in this post-second World War race.We had a head start, enjoying in the early years of independence a long-standing bilateral deal to exchange rubber for rice that stood for 25 years or more.
Moreover, Sri Lanka’s plantation industries seemed to provide sufficient fuel to keep the economic engine running in those early days, at least among the rising entrepreneurial class andthe existing plantation-owning autocracy.
What proved so defeating is that in those early independence years, when emerging free states like Singapore et alstood as worthwhile illustrations to emulate on the path to modernisation, Sri Lanka seemed to feel that it was economically steady enough to carry on without pressing ahead.
Despite tidy offers in the way of attractive concessions, Sri Lanka’s response over the years seemed rather tardy.
What caused the difference in thinking and action between the Southeast nations whose governments seemed committed to forge ahead, taking their nations along with them, and the Sri Lankan government, was that the latter appeared to be in the hands of politicians who, in many cases, seemed amateurish and lacking in foresight.Somewere adventurers to whom self-aggrandisement was a more important pursuit than serving the people.
Over the years Sri Lanka has tried to attract foreign investment
Sri Lanka’s sudden political transformation following the presidential and parliamentary elections just over a year ago, which ushered in a Marxist-Leftist inclined alliance, National People’s Power (NPP), with both the executive and legislature in the hands of a Leftist government – the first in the country’s 75 years of independence – seemed just what an angry and disillusioned people were hoping for. All the other ‘isms’ had, after all, failed to satisfy the poorer classes and some ethnic groups.
The NPP, led by a Marxist of the radical Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP- People’s Liberation Front), which twice launched insurrections in the 1970s and 80s, seemed the only choice available to bring fundamental change to Sri Lanka.
And that is what its NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake promised on the campaign trail for the presidency, to win his party an unprecedented parliamentary authority.
Sri Lanka appeared to be in the hands of politicians who lacked foresight
One of his grand promises was that his government would wipe out bribery and corruption, in which politicians, bureaucrats and even the private sector were steeped to the core.
No matter how attractive any offers held out to potential investors, they hesitated from accepting the bait because Sri Lanka’s reputation as a hell-hole of corruption was too well known globally.Even all the gold in the Treasury vaults (if any still remains) would not draw honest foreign investors to step into the cess pool.
But that does not mean shady investors have shied away from the stretching hand that expects piles of dollars to be placed in it.
There are plenty of shady deals that have come to light since the President Dissanayake launched his crackdown against corruption, with many politicians from opposing sides, local government and other institutions being hauled across to the courts claiming political victimisation.
The truth or otherwise of these accusations might be settled by judicial action, though not necessarily to the satisfaction of all sides.
If President Dissanayake and his crew – which some have called a motley one –believe that crushing corruption is their main immediate worry, this young government has badly misread the emerging national picture
It is bad enough that the Marxist leader, now slowly but visibly turning from Left to Right, has to sort out the socio-economic problems that came with his election victories; he and his government arealso enmeshed in a new menace that he did not anticipate when he took office.
It might be an exaggeration to compare the situation to Chicago of the 1930s and later, when gangs settled their differences with guns and explosives. But those who remember the real scenes in Chicago at the height of gang confrontations are unlikely to reject the allusion.
The NPP and its allies might say that the campaign promise to crackdown on corruption has been fulfilled as suspects are dragged to police stations or the office of state detectives, and may end up before a magistrate.
But what Dissanayake faces today are pillion riders on two-wheeled vehicles, wielding lethal weapons including automatic firearms stolen from army camps or taken home by deserters, or even weapons allotted to politicians which have not been returned at the end of their term of office.
Some weeks ago an assassin pretending to be a lawyer walked up to a witness giving evidence from the dock, and shot him dead. Just the other day a Local Government chairman in the country’s south was shot and killed by an assassin claiming he required advice. The killer escaped after the shooting.
Police claim that orders for assassinations, as well as the movement of large drug hauls, come from Dubai and other convenient overseas places, from where Sri Lankan gangsters and gang leaders pass on messages to their counterparts in Sri Lanka.
There are killers for hire. Recently Sri Lankan police, with the help of Interpol and Indonesian officers, were able to round up six suspected Sri Lankan gang leaders operating from Indonesia.
This is not the only grab law officers have made overseas, especially in Dubai, which is now notorious for high class wheeler-dealers and assassins for hire.
President Dissanayake hoped for a quiet, clean parliament, a decent place for debate. But outside of its walls, the country has become an unpredictable killing field.
The image created by blurb writers and others attempting to attract the tourist trade, which has been growing, is of a beautiful, calm island nation.
But even they would be hesitant to go there if they had to walk around as though the lovely, pleasant holiday spot is today’s Okay Corral, where one watches roadside battles and goes home with a new kind of story to tell.
Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who held senior roles in Hong Kong at The Standard and worked in London for Gemini News Service. He has been a correspondent for foreign media including the New York Times and Le Monde. More recently he was Sri Lanka’s deputy high commissioner in London