UNP for anti-corruption laws
The main opposition UNP today said it will back any attempt to implement anti-corruption laws in the country.
UNP MP Tissa Attanayake said that the JVP had challenged the UNP to publicly state its stand on such laws.
Attanayake said the UNP had always stood for corrupt Government officials to be held accountable and so it will back such laws being implemented by any Government.
He said that when the UNP comes to power it will investigate all corrupt practices of Government officials and even politicians.
He recalled that in 1994 when the Commission to investigate allegations of bribery or corruption proposed laws to deal with corrupt officials the UNP had given its full backing to the then Government.
Attanayake also said that the misuse of State property has been a serious issue and the UNP has always been ready to support moves against such activities. (Colombo Gazette)
Police Spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana has, in a recent television interview, challenged those who claim that the Police Department is the most corrupt state institution, to substantiate their allegation with credible proof. His consternation is understandable. Statistics are simply plucked out of the air by some people who conduct 'surveys' based on tiny samples and riddled with errors with a view to supporting their preconceived opinions and furthering their hidden agendas. They make their ‘findings’ out to be the truth and aggressively market them.
Cops’ umbrage
Editorial-January 26, 2014,
Police Spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana has, in a recent television interview, challenged those who claim that the Police Department is the most corrupt state institution, to substantiate their allegation with credible proof. His consternation is understandable. Statistics are simply plucked out of the air by some people who conduct 'surveys' based on tiny samples and riddled with errors with a view to supporting their preconceived opinions and furthering their hidden agendas. They make their ‘findings’ out to be the truth and aggressively market them.
In 2007, no less a person than a US ambassador in Colombo said that a study had indicated that Sri Lanka’s GDP would have grown by at least two more percentage points in 2006 had government corruption been prevented. True, corruption has taken a heavy toll on national development and everything possible must be done to eliminate it, but how could one quantify its ill-effect on the economy so precisely? Reliable information about corruption is woefully lacking in this country.
Moreover, it is being claimed in some quarters that 50,000 youth were killed during the JVP’s second uprising (1987-89). Who took a body count? This figure is based on what an Opposition firebrand cum human rights lawyer at that time—Mahinda Rajapaksa—told the foreign media. Now, the UN and a section of the international community tell us that more than 40,000 civilians were killed during the closing stages of the Vanni war in 2009. This figure is based on information provided by unnamed persons and organisations taking cover behind a wall of secrecy.
Prior to invading Iraq the US and the UK commissioned a study on what they claim to be Saddam Hussein’s WMD programme and produced an elaborate report to justify war. The world is now aware that the evidence therein was falsified. So much for surveys, studies and statistical data!
It is now up to those who claim that the police are the most corrupt state institution to take up the Police Spokesman’s challenge and produce irrefutable evidence.
Meanwhile, SSP Rohana and several other high ranking police officers have taken exception to our editorial comment, ‘What a shame!’ on Jan. 22. We hauled the police over the coals for their failure to arrest the absconding Tangalle Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman Sampath Vidanapathirana, one of the accused in the Khuram Shaikh murder case. He was subsequently taken into custody. They told us that it was regrettable that the good work done by the police, more often than not, went unappreciated. But, we keep saying in these columns that the police are not short of good, efficient men and women and they must be given a free hand to deal with lawbreakers.
The police have, on more than one occasion, proved that they are capable of doing their job. They rid the Peliyagoda fish market of extortionists who had been exacting millions of rupees from traders and transporters. The police mounted a pre-dawn raid and arrested all underworld figures obtaining protection money. Senior DIG Anura Senanayake himself, albeit in a different capacity at that time, took part in the operation and collared several extortionists himself. That raid yielded desired results because Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa ensured that there was no political interference. There is a pressing need for many such ops against the underworld controlled by politically connected criminals.
In one of Saki’s beautiful short stories, 'Penance', three children who angrily call their otherwise affable neighbour ‘beast’ upon catching him in the act of burying their small tabby cat he had killed for preying on his chickens, later change their opinion of the man after he performs many a propitiatory act; finally they throw a note into his garden with this word scribbled on it, ‘Un-beast’. Similarly, now that the Tangalle PS Chairman has been arrested and remanded till the conclusion of the trial and the Police Spokesman has suggested good-humouredly that we at least correct the title of our comment in question, shall we say, "What an UN-SHAME!"?
However, one swallow, as they say, does not make a summer. While the police should be praised for the arrest of the Tangalle PS Chairman, let it be stressed that they have a long way to go before public faith is restored in their institution. That will remain an elusive goal unless they are liberated from the clutches of politicians in power responsible for protecting lawbreakers of all sorts including hardcore criminals in the garb of parliamentarians, provincial councilors and local government members. Shame on those who eviscerated the 17th Amendment, which came close to ensuring the independence of key state institutions including the police!
