Rural Perspectives: The Disappearance Of The Very Concepts Of Accountability And Responsibility
Emil van der Poorten
A reader would certainly be justified in asking what is particularly “rural” about the title of this column.
Let me try to explain, even if the preamble proves a tad tedious!
The recent kerfuffle over the accountability/responsibility of the Prime Minister, D. M. Jayaratne, in the matter of one of his immediate minions being directly involved in the smuggling of heroin in truly historic proportions, brings a couple of things to public attention (again!)
The first of these is the prevailing “shape” culture that enables anyone to do anything they please as long as they don’t displease any member of the Rajapaksa family. Does one have to quote chapter and verse with regard to the obscenities parading as decisions by an oligarchy parading as a “socialist, democratic goverment” in this country or would simply referring to the most recent event under cover of this very larger-than-life heroin bust suffice? That event was the dropping of charges of a capital crime against Cabinet Minister Punchinilame. In any country with pretensions to being a democracy with media uncontrolled by the government, this event would have provoked screaming front page headlines. Not in Sri Lanka, I’m afraid where it appeared tucked away in a corner of a web edition of one English language newspaper!
But, as significant as the timing of the Punchinilame exoneration was, the shenanigans around the heroin bust exposed the complete disappearance of the very concepts of accountability and responsibility in so-called “democratic governance” in The Debacle of Asia! In any country with even pretensions to democratic practice, the fact that a senior functionary in the office of the Prime Minister had issued instructions for a waiver of duty and immunity from inspection of a shipment of almost half a metric tonne of heroin would not simply have made the headlines of all the media but would have resulted in not only the immediate resignation of said Prime Minister but a criminal investigation of his conduct and that of all those responsible for this train of events.
Instead, what we have had is a bunch of apologists, inclusive of Opposition spokespersons muttering soothing platitudes about how totally unlikely it was that said Prime Minister would be within a million miles of any such wrong-doing!
To describe this as “theatre of the absurd” would be understating the case quite dramatically except that the current state of affairs is further “absurdized” by the contention that any comment about all of this is “Sub Judice” by virtue of this whole sorry mess being potentially the subject of some sort of judicial investigation! As the those less given to polite expression would ask, “Where the hell does all of this lead?”
I don’t know “Where the hell it all of it leads,” but I see that all of it certainly should lead to a realization, even at this late date, that these cornerstones of democratic practice have disappeared from the public discourse practiced in Sri Lanka. Read More
