Damage control rates top priority

January 19, 2013, 

Ever since the smelly stuff hit the fan after the government decided to press on with the impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, now completed with a successor enthroned, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has not tired of stressing that those who must be punished for various acts of commission and omission will be dealt with regardless of the positions they hold. That goes for everybody, superior court and lower court judges included, he said on Friday at the opening of the Dikkowita fisheries harbor. That rule has, of course, not held for the likes of Minister Mervyn Silva whose various antics have been in the public eye over a long period of time. He has no doubt been suspended from his position of the UPFA’s organizer of Kelaniya where a member of the Pradeshiya Sabha with whom he was at loggerheads was murdered recently, and some of his aides are among the suspects. But Silva remains a minister and we do not know whether the police have even recorded his statement as would have been the case for any other Silva or Perera.

There have been recent statements from various members of the ruling hierarchy, including Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa, that certain changes to the 1978 constitution which is currently the country’s supreme law, may be appropriate. While governmental leaders have continued to justify what was done to Bandaranayake, who claims to be still CJ on the basis of court rulings that have been rejected by the establishment, there were indications at a news conference on Friday attended by Ministers Anura Priyadharshana Yapa, Susil Premajayantha and Keheliya Rambukwella that some constitutional amendments are possible. That is an indication that everything that was said and written during the drama-packed weeks when Bandaranayake’s head was on the chopping block has not been dismissed out of hand by the rulers. While making abundantly clear that the matter concerning the CJ or ex-CJ, whatever be her current status, was dealt with under constitutional provisions and parliamentary standing order that were then in place, they broadly hinted that making necessary changes for the future will be give due consideration.

It is also significant that President Rajapaksa gave his allies in the old left some leeway to unburden themselves on this matter. Although the decisions of the LSSP and CP appear to have been that their members would abstain from voting on the resolution to submit an address of parliament to the president to remove the CJ, they in fact absented themselves at voting time. Prof. Tissa Vitarana of the LSSP, like Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha, UPFA National List MP who was also not present at voting time, on Friday published the speech he planned to make but could not, to explain and justify his party’s stand on the whole question. We published Wijesinha’s text last Sunday. The Communist Party’s Dew Gunasekera was granted the parliamentary platform to express his party’s point of view. That would be sufficient airing for that particular standpoint, Vitarana and Wijesinha were told and politely denied speaking time on the floor. Given that all three of them owe their national list seats in parliament to the grace and favor of the president, there was very little they could do about it. But the fact that no whip was cracked and they were excused from voting for the resolution, with the intended abstention further diluted to permitted absence at voting time, was a clear signal that the president’s policy on such matters was not to break the camel’s back. He was willing to allow them a face saving formula of sorts given that he had the numbers to do what he wanted.

Few can match the president’s public relations skills. If Ms. Bandaranayake had a one-to-one meeting with him even a few days prior to the resolution being voted on in parliament, there was every possibility that a less painful exit for the CJ could have been arranged. There are many in the inner councils of government who are convinced of this for good reason. But that was not to be and Ms. Bandaranayake had to pay the ultimate price. Nobody knows better than the president that issues such as these lose steam sooner rather than later. The domestic campaign is not what it was the previous week although the story is still on the front pages of the non-state media. Statements from the western democracies, UN agencies and good governance activists continue to flow and it is all too clear that the country’s foreign policy managers will have their work cut out for them in controlling the damage. We do not need the US ambassador to tell us that issues such as these will undoubtedly make foreign investors re-think decisions to come here. Yet foreign inflows into the Colombo Stock Exchange continued unabated in the days following the changing of the guard in Hultsdorf. Nevertheless we cannot be unmindful of trade sanctions though no threats on that score have been made up to now.

The road ahead on the foreign relations front will undoubtedly be rough. The question can be asked whether we need to have embarked on the now concluded exercise in an unseemly hurry. The president could well have been of the view that it was better to finish it off quickly and surgically without allowing it to drag on with the resulting unfavorable publicity that would have been inevitable. The job, of course, was not done at all surgically and the blood on the floor was not only that of the CJ. The country’s reputation as a functioning democracy was also seriously eroded. There are those who think that we may not be able to host the forthcoming Commonwealth Summit as a result if some of the hawks in that organization have their way. Many people here would be happy if such is the case if only for the reason that there will be one less tamasha on which we will be wasting our limited resources. A considerable section of the urban middle class applauded our failed bid to host the next Commonwealth Games for this very reason. What was spent on the extravagant bid was bad enough, but that would have been small change against what the actual cost would have been had we got the games.