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A global health pandemic is not the time for political upmanship. It is also the worst time to engage in fragrant violations of justice in the exploitative belief that the uproar therein would be muted when the citizenry is in survivalist mode. At any point, this would be abhorrent but to do so during a pandemic speaks to a special kind of contempt towards the Rule of Law.

Classic examples of criminal foolishness

On both these counts, this Presidency and this Government needs to be held to account by the nation even as Sri Lanka faces an unprecedented public health emergency. In fact, on the first count, there are uncanny similarities between the United States’s bellicose President Donald Trump bellowing abuse at beleagured Governors requesting urgent federal support for hospitals and hospital staff under siege by the surging number of covid-19 cases and our own Ministers whose trumpted claims that Sri Lanka is poised to be a role model for tackling this pandemic is a classic example of criminal foolishness.

Let us be clear about this. If election priorities had not dominated the mindset of this Government earlier in the month, preventative measures would have been taken much earlier. This is amply borne out by President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s proclaimation during the recent teleconference with SAARC leaders, that there will be no postponement of the national polls from its due date (25th April) which position was then reversed scarcely a week later by the Elections Commission as the covid-19 virus took its hold on the population.

If there had not been such insistence on preserving a veneer of normalcy in order to persist with the aim of holding the parliamentary polls, the lockdown that the country is currently experiencing would have been imposed earlier. Probably the spread of the pandemic may have been minimalised. As it is, the Government did not do so. For that negligence, the blame must be fairly and squarely placed where it should be. So these ‘off and on’ triumphant announcements by the Health Minister that ‘no new covid-19  cases’ are being reported must be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt.

Scarcely believable narratives

On the one hand, the official narrative of scarcely believable positivism flies in the face of basic commonsense, (somewhat like the zero casualties claim floated by the Mahinda Rajapaksa Presidency at the ending of the war in the Wanni, to be stealthily reversed later). On the other hand, both the doctors and the police warn us to the contrary. Coming close on the heels of the Health Minister’s exuberance this Wednesday, the police spokesman warned the public of a “hidden community” of carriers (‘true’ unconfirmed number) that are reluctant to come forward (Economy Next, March 25th 2020).

Even more ominously, the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) cautioned that the ‘true’ number of Sri Lanka’s covid-19 cases may be ‘far more’ than the confirmed number. Those sensible words of caution dampened silly statements of the Government’s men and women who seemed determined to place their political agendas over the nation’s necessities. We can only hope that Sri Lanka will not emulate the asininity of the US President who wants the ‘churches to be full on Easter’ and press forward with holding parliamentary elections until the public health situation in the country fully returns to normal.

On top of all that and during a time when the country was blanketed with curfew, the Presidential pardoning of former Army Staff Sergeant R.M. Sunil Ratnayake who had been convicted for the summary killing of eight Tamil civilians in Mirusuvil in December 2000 gives rise to considerable outrage. This case is a poster child example of what is so terribly wrong with Sri Lanka’s justice system. As such and even in the first instance, it must be said that the conviction itself is not to be feted as a typical illustration of justice being done. Rather, the Presidential pardon this week was the final indignity visited on the victims of this atrocity.

A historic atrocity that did not get justice 

This case concerned the fate of a few villagers who had been forced to abandon their homes in Mirusovil due to shelling during the height of the conflict in the North and had cycled back to the village during a lull to get whatever possible produce to exist. As they were leaving their homes, one of the group who was the father of a five year old ‘toddler’ as the Supreme Court observed in upholding the conviction on appeal, had been diverted by his five year son who demanded that the father get some gauva fruit for him.

Accordingly the small group had proceeded to the gauva tree but had been accosted by a a patrol of soldiers of the Gajaba regiment.They were summarily shot at point blank range and their bodies were thrown into a cesspit. Five soldiers (of Sinhalese ethnicity) including a lieutenant were indicted and a trial-at-bar of the Colombo High Court. Finally the trial-at-bar acquitted four accused soldiers for ‘insufficient evidence’ but had little option to convict Army Staff Sergeant R.M. Sunil Ratnayake after a lengthy and spluttering trial process that took well over a decade. The trial (due to start in 2003) was postponed for almost four years due to the assassination of one judge (Sarath Ambepitiya) in 2004 with another judge being removed from the judiciary on disciplinary grounds.

Witnesses were also reluctant to travel to Colombo for court hearings. Ratnayake’s meagre and solitary conviction, (veritably a sop thrown to those demanding justice), was upheld by the Supreme Court following a meticulous consideration of the evidence and the evidence of the sole and traumatized survivor of that atrocity. Even this was however, rendered as naught by the Presidential pardon this week.

Heightened vigilance is needed

So in sum, this leads us to the question of political actions during the covid-19 panic, from the Government persistence to downplay the severity of the health crisis to presidential pardons of those committing cold blooded murder. This does not bode well for the future. We are in extraordinary times, where the call will soon be for a rolling back of civil liberties and civil rights in the name of the ‘common good.’ But the path thereon is disastrous as this will be a dangerously slippery slope.

It is precisely in times like these that heightened vigilance is needed. Sri Lanka faces severe tests of its resilience, not the least of which is the fact that our weakened economy, with which politicians have played games with among themselves, cannot sustain these cruelly massive blows. Whether and how we meet multiple crises, of public health, the support given to the weak to survive the storm and adherence to the Rule of Law will determine what this country will be in the decades to come.