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Of what use are Ministers and the panoply of Government for that matter, if it takes the Executive President clothed in the awful constitutional powers of the Head of State, to advise on minimising of ‘price discrepancies’ regarding the production of raw milk and direct relevant state institutions to ensure supply of ‘grass needed to feed the cattle.’

Presidential power and politicians as cattle

In truth, one is not sure if the handlers of the Presidential social media account are aware of how ridiculous they make the Office of the President look in the eyes of the public? During Friday’s telecast of national news, a ruling politician held forth proudly as to how, on a presidential directive, milk (and honey as well?) would flow freely. Perchance, a national intervention is needed for the education of Sri Lankan politicians who are far worse in their extraordinary bovine stupidity than Sri Lankan cattle.

For impoverished citizens struggling without fuel, daily essentials including milk powder, power supply and probably water supply in coming days, this is another ‘nadagama’ (tomfoolery). Essentially, it is one of many such unedifying dramas that make up a diet of ghastly entertainment these days. Is this how Rome fell, we wonder, as Nero fiddled? Sri Lankan political potentates mercifully do not have song and dance as accompaniments even while they offer one incredible explanation after another, as to why the country is in this state, all of which foist the blame on the other.

But they cannot. Responsibility ensues on the part of each politician as well as a miserable, motley whole, incessantly warring with each other in the chambers of the Parliament. A few days ago, we had an unholy fracas over one or several torches that an Opposition parliamentarian brought to the House to illustrate the fuel crisis that has crippled societal functioning. Put aside the Opposition’s antics in reducing a serious national crisis to a joke, the joke becomes farce when the Speaker states in all solemnity that he will complain to the Inspector General of Police (IGP).

How dangerous are torches compared to chilli powder?

Are there no other preoccupations that the House should concern itself with at this time? Meanwhile, the Leader of the House holds forth on torches being ‘dangerous objects’ that ought not be brandished about. There is a grim irony here about the absence of light, literal and metaphorically speaking, on the part of this Government in facing grave financial and social crises that has relegated Sri Lanka to pathetically begging from its neighbours in South Asia. Employing torches will not suffice to light the Government’s way towards enlightenment. Nothing short of brain transplants will do, we dare say.

In fact, the argument that police officers were prevented from carrying out their duties by Opposition parliamentarians carrying torches into the Chamber is thin, to say the least. If torches are categorised as dangerous objects, what can Government worthies say about the chilli powder that they flung as Opposition rowdies, at the eyes of the then Speaker and ruling parliamentarians at the time? The fact that no action was taken against those responsible remains an indictment on our political culture, needless to say. These are cruel jokes played on the citizenry, ‘yahapalanaya’ or ‘viyath maga’ nonetheless.

And then, there are equally shameful trading of blame and counter-blame in Parliament on the identity of the ‘maha mola karaya’ (master mind) of the 2019 Easter Sunday jihadist attacks. All this while the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith visits the Vatican to plead the cause of victims of the attacks while professing that the Church has ‘absolutely no faith’ in either the Attorney General or the Government to bring about justice for those killed or maimed. (Suddenly) the report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the attacks by homegrown islamists is presented to Parliament in a remarkable coincidence as it were.

Grinding of the wheels of justice in Nimalarajan’s killing

Regardless, will the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and associated intelligence agencies take action on these reports now in the public domain? Some might say that this is akin to that pithy Sinhala saying, ‘horage amma-gen pena ahanawa wage’ (asking a thief’s mother for clues as to who is responsible for the thievery). But make no mistake, this has been the fate of Sri Lanka’s criminal justice system for a very long time while Commissions of Inquiry, voluminous reports et al come and go. Elsewhere however, the wheels of justice grind slowly in regard to crimes committed on Sri Lankan soil, classified as war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide or torture.

On Thursday, the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit located within the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, confirmed the arrest of an unnamed man, described tersely as ‘a 48-year-old man at an address in Northamptonshire’ in connection with the murder of BBC journalist Mylvaganam Nimalarajan, twenty three years ago. Nimalarajan was killed in 2000 after being repeatedly shot through the window of his Jaffna based home during curfew hours, by assailants who also lobbied a grenade inside.

His parents and other members of his family were also injured in the attack. He had been engaging in critical reporting on vote-rigging and intimidation in Jaffna during the October 2000 parliamentary elections implicating the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) cadre affiliated to the Government. The globally based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wrote to then President Chandrika Kumaratunga in 2001, saying that it was ‘deeply disturbed’ that investigative efforts ‘appear to have been utterly abandoned.’

All Governments, all Presidents are culpable

Sharp questions were asked as to how the killing occurred ‘in a high-security zone in Jaffna town, just 20 yards from a military checkpoint…with three other checkpoints nearbye.’ These were questions asked by countless relatives of countless victims of minority ethnicity in countless other incidents, all of which have received no answers by all Governments, all Presidents. More than two decades later after Nimalarajan’s assassination , the Met Police arrested a suspect on ‘suspicion of offences under Section 51 of the International Criminal Court Act 2001.’

Taken into custody, he has since been released under investigation as the process continues. Calling for public assistance in that regard, the head of the Met Counter Terrorism Command, Commander Richard Smith, observed that, ‘ This is a significant update in what is a sensitive, complex investigation…’ But apart from the facts of the instant case, this assertion of authority to act under the United Kingdom’s International Criminal Court Act (2001) becomes enormously consequential as a matter of strict law.

As memory recalls, ‘yahapalanaya’ stalwarts once boasted that former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had made sure that the Rome Statute was not brought into Sri Lanka’s domestic law, thereby protecting those who had committed war crimes et al. But this sad boast becomes of little value when courts and investigative mechanisms in other nations proceed on that exact basis under their own laws as we see plainly. Essentially, this is what will happen to investigations concerning the Easter Sunday jihadist attacks in 2019.

That is even more so as nationals of many other countries were killed in the attacks. Fleeing overseas even at any concievable point in the future may not be easy, commanders and foot soldiers alike if implicated in war crimes, crimes against humanity or torture.

That is the clear message.