Editorial-February 10, 2014, 7:47 pm
President Mahinda Rajapaksa tells us that he has shut the door on crossovers from the UNP as he believes the country needs an Opposition. We think the truth is quite otherwise. He does not have to further weaken the Opposition which is busy ruining its chances of winning elections and poses no formidable challenge to him.
Having systematically debilitated the UNP by engineering defections the government is now playing the role of the main Opposition. It seems to have taken a leaf out of the book of logging companies which set up puppet environmental groups in some South American countries to oppose their sordid operations so as to leave no space for genuine environmentalists to move in to threaten their interests.
The UPFA is being taken to task by its own constituents over various issues! The JHU, besides opposing the government’s casino project tooth and nail, has taken on Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne for a controversial letter issued by his office a few moons ago seeking demurrage waivers for a container where heroin was subsequently found. It has even called for his resignation. In so doing, it has cleverly stolen a march on the Opposition.
One expected the UNP to exploit the heroin issue and make a great deal of political capital, but strangely, it chose to defend the beleaguered PM in Parliament to the hilt, claiming that he was a victim of a conspiracy within the SLFP.
Now, the National Freedom Front (NFF), also a coalition partner of the government, has embarked on a campaign to have drug dealers hanged. It has, no doubt, struck a responsive chord with the public troubled by the rapid expansion of the netherworld of drugs and crime. Desperate, they are calling for extraordinary measures to remove the scourge of narcotics.
The NFF, like the JHU, is running with the hare and hunting with the hounds! Votes they may attract by voicing dissent and criticising the government will end up in the UPFA’s basket. However, one cannot but agree with NFF leader Wimal Weerawansa that poverty alleviation is a prerequisite for eliminating narcotics. More than one half of the people of Colombo live in slums and shanties, where drug abuse is rampant. He has, as the minister in charge of housing, launched several apartment projects to help the city poor, but there is a long way to go before the problem is effectively tackled. As for sending drug dealers to the gallows, we repeat, he has spoken for the vast majority of people who fear for the safety of their children.
The death penalty has become a big joke in this country. New laws favourable to the powers that be are rushed through Parliament in record time in spite of protests but that kind of high octane performance is sadly lacking on the part of governments in enforcing existing laws beneficial to the law-abiding citizens.
Meanwhile, our prisons are no correctional facilities where hardly any inmate gets rehabilitated. Awash with narcotics and banned items of all sorts, they are places where convicts network; some of them, like drug barons and extortionists, even carry out their criminal operations via mobile phones from their cells. Worse, dangerous criminals whose death sentences have been commuted to life sentences stage protests demanding that they be released after twenty years in jail! These elements, still among the living thanks to self-righteous politicians who cannot bring themselves to hang criminals, have made it an uphill task to maintain order in state pens. Ironically, politicians who do not want to sully their hands by resuming judicial executions have no qualms about condoning extrajudicial killings.
The best forum for UPFA allies to take up issues such as narcotics, the non-implementation of death penalty, high cost of living etc and demand solutions is the weekly Cabinet meeting. Ministers who represent those parties are bound by the principle of collective Cabinet responsibility and, therefore, cannot absolve themselves of the blame for the government’s faults without breaking ranks with it.
