Editorial-January 23, 2014,
UNP MP Mangala Samaraweera has taken umbrage at what he calls a government move to invoke an archaic Victorian law in Sri Lanka’s Penal Code as part of a political witch hunt against him. He accuses his rivals of using a domestic aide turned thief who broke into his house recently for that purpose.
We do not intend to go into details of the issue or elaborate on what MP Samaraweera has chosen to leave unsaid. Everybody has a right to privacy which needs to be respected.
However, it is our considered view that no one is without blemish in the obnoxiously dirty game that is Sri Lankan politics, where virtually anything goes. Politicians, except a handful, have mistaken politicking for destroying opponents, politically or even otherwise. Character assassination has become the norm. The government accuses some of Mangala’s confidants of having a hand in venomously defamatory attacks carried out by certain websites against key UPFA politicians including President Mahinda Rajapaksa. And Mangala blames the government and the state media for vilifying him and other prominent Opposition figures. This is a very sad state of affairs.
But, on no grounds could attempts to use laws as political weapons be countenanced. For, such measures, besides being morally reprehensible, are fraught with the danger of leading to further erosion of public faith in the country’s legal system.
Why was it that no issue was made of Mangala’s private life and nobody cared to invoke the draconian Victorian law at issue to deal with him while he was in the SLFP? He, it should be recalled, was one of the few SLFP heavyweights who had the courage to throw their weight behind the then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in the presidential election fray in 2005. They even incurred the wrath of the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and her allies hostile to the Rajapaksas for doing so. But for the senior SLFP ministers like him in the UPFA coalition at that time and the much-maligned Rathu Sahodarayas who beavered away against tremendous odds to enable the SLFP to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, perhaps the country would have had a different President.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, at a post-CHOGM press briefing, minced no words when he told hostile western countries calling for a war crimes probe against his government: "Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones." This, the self-righteous, ruling party big guns accused of perusing the Penal Code in a bid to invoke prediluvian laws to silence their rivals should take cognisance of. They are no angels as is common knowledge and their alleged witch hunt may boomerang.
Some of the existing laws and penalties for certain offences are ridiculous. The world has changed and the Penal Code remains an anachronism. It is high time necessary changes were effected to it so that outdated draconian laws cannot be invoked according to the whims and fancies of those in power. Chief Justice Mohan Peiris himself, at a meeting with the Maha Nayake Theras of the Malwatte and Asgiriya Chapters the other day stressed the need for legal and judicial reforms.
The government flays western countries at every turn for their double standards on war crimes and invoking international laws selectively to harass Sri Lanka’s political and military leaders. It has no moral right to be critical of foreign governments for such deplorable action while adopting the same methods at home to deal with its opponents. If it has no qualms about using a thief’s statement to vilify an Opposition politician, then it should stop protesting against the use by the West of terror activists’ unsubstantiated claims to paint a black picture of it.
