NO ROOM FOR MISTAKES IN MANN  Sunday 22 July 2012 This week’s attack on the Mannar Courthouse by a mob is one more in a strange series of incidents which seem to threaten the very underpinnings of the System — or what’s loosely termed the social contract that governs the smooth functioning of government. There were earlier the political goons that ran amock in the Southern Province, and then before that in the remembered past, the grease yakka incidents, of course now culminating in the so called crime wave in which rapes of underage persons are – often falsely – blamed on the government. The Mannar Court attack is one in a line of incidents where perception is the most dangerous thing the government has to contend with. This does not mean that the facts adduced by those who want a government minister arrested over the serious incident of stone-throwing at a Courthouse are necessarily flawed. The minister concerned has denied the story. The president has ordered the IGP to conduct an investigation. Says the minister that the people took the law into their own hands, as Muslim fishermen in the area, whom he for the most part represents, were angry at a Court ruling in which the Mannar magistrate refused to have a fishery mooring-station revert to Muslim residents after the long drawn out war. The magistrate also apparently ordered the arrest of some Muslim fishermen for arson, for having attacked a Tamil fisher colony. If so, the question remains why Minister Bathiudeen is not asking the fishermen who stoned the Courthouse to turn themselves in. They may be his supporters. But stoning a Courthouse is a serious assault on the entire edifice required for the smooth functioning of society — as said earlier, such acts threaten the very basis of the social contract. Mr. Bathiudeen may not want to antagonize his support base, but that, to invert the phrase, is not understandable. He has told a newspaper that he was not in Mannar in the first instance, when the mob rioted. Well, the minister did not have to be in Mannar at all, if he really wanted to incite a mob. This commentator is not suggesting that he did. But the charges made against the minister by no ordinary person but a magistrate are so serious that he cannot hope to diffuse the situation by making cursory statements. He has to show that he really understands the import of what has happened. A mob has stoned and stormed a Courthouse. This is serious obstruction of justice, and a minister with a previous record of erratic behaviour – he has on some occasions pulled a gun on bystanders in public altercations – has to indicate that he knows what the mob has done is utterly condemnable. And to do that, he has to before all else, roundly condemn the mob, something as stated before, he has not done so far… He denies the fact that he phoned the Mannar magistrate and asked him to overturn a Court order, but then, this is a magistrate that’s making these charges, and it is most unlikely that such an officer of the law would have made such a complaint without sufficient reason to do so. The president has ordered an investigation - and for the record, the IGP can find out whether a call originated to the Mannar magistrate from any of Minister Bathiudeen’s phone numbers. A newspaper has opined that there is an ethno-political colouration to the incident because Muslim fishermen are angry over the fact that a fishery mooring-station has not been returned to them after the war ended. The newspaper stopped short of saying that the minister is Muslim, and the judge is Tamil! Such attempts to rationalize, or is it sanitize, the incident, are dangerous. An injustice may have well been done to the community, and nobody from afar is able to ascertain that to any degree of conviction in a hurry. But injustices happen all the time, and sometimes they can happen through the agency of Court. That’s no reason for a mob to take the law into its own hands, and go berserk stoning the Courthouse, trying to damage the Courts complex. It has also been reported that the magistrate ordered the police to shoot at the mob, and this newspaper learns reliably that there is video footage showing the magistrate asking the police to shoot at the unlawful assembly of stone throwers. If the minister was incorrigible, the magistrate was bordering on lunacy, to ask the police to shoot. If the police has done so and there were shots fired and people died, the calamity ensuing would have been of incalculable proportions. It seems therefore that things have gone out of control in Mannar. It is above all imperative that the status quo ante-sanity, in one word — is restored. If the minister was behind the attack on the Courthouse there should be no way out for him other than resignation or outright sacking. Fair enough that an investigation has been ordered. But it has to be a serious one, and has to take cognizance of the fact that it is a magistrate making the complaint. In the evolving narrative, there seems to be a certain keenness on the one hand, to impute motives to the magistrate for his ruling on the mooring-station/arson dispute. It is true that if a magistrate was truly biased, it would be difficult to get a baying mob to understand that storming the Courthouse is not the best way of reacting to perceived injustice. But ministers are not the mob, the cabinet is not a mob, the IGP is not the mob – and the president is not the mob. It is imperative for the very existence of the social contract that the inquiry into this incident is swift, impartial, and a no-nonsense exercise that would bring the minister to book if he was guilty. If he wasn’t, very solid evidence has to be supplied to the contrary, as the people would not be gullible to prevarications and/or lame rationalizations. If indeed it also appears that there was an injustice done to the people, the Muslims of the area, that has to be undone by legal process. There is a process of appeal, as the magistrate has himself reminded. The mills of justice may grind slowly, and that may not satisfy either the minister or the impatient mob in Mannar, but people everywhere have had to regularly face perceived injustice through the agency of fallible Courts. If this incident is treated as just another that’s explicable and can be wished away, we could face the most dangerous moment in the very existence of the our entire democratic edifice. Posted by Thavam