The Sunday Times Editorial

03rd March 1996


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Stay Alert

We are rapidly lapsing into our customary somnolence in the happy thought that security in the city has been tightened and that those who know about such matters have slipped some carefully considered and detailed plan to safeguard us citizens, into its operative phase.

Can we however afford such complacency? The evidence of such security planning is most prominently evident on our roads, where vehicles are stopped and subject to checking.

How effective are these checks in the selections of those to be checked? Does it not appear to be about as much result-oriented as a game of scratch and match? There is a substantial cost involved in such exercises and it would seem to us that an investment in refining our intelligence sources and paying handsomely for useful information may give better dividends. No doubt surveillance is necessary in terms of deterrence. Yet it is still peripheral to the fundamental business of ferreting out information.

Again, it may well be worthwhile, if this has not already been recently done, to seek the views and advice of a foreign friendly country familiar with such situations, to take an overview of our security measures in the aftermath of the bomb.

We have a distressing tendency to scurry to lock our doors on each occasion after the tiger bolts. In the same way, we seem to morbidity and with a sense of karmic fatality await the next explosion, and as long as we are not dismembered, there will be a few weeks of good stories of near misses and no misses to relate.

And what are we doing about reminding our people of the disastrous consequences of 1983 and how close we are to falling into the Tiger trap of a repeat performance?

Is it not time for the government to harness all media, and for, to advise our people of the dangers of such an eventuality? Should it not woo the opposition to join in such an exercise which must be a priority national issue? Should not all political parties, through their grassroot organisations make known the futility of such an expression of feeling? Should not the well known unruly elements who activate immediately on such occasions, be watched and marked carefully by the police?

We are sitting ducks for a holocaust. When will the powers that be snap out of their robot-like progression from crisis to crisis, and begin to think ahead?

Cracks in Cement

The Sunday Times which was the first to break the news of the controversy at the Puttalam Cement Company as far back as in March last year, today publishes on Pages 4 and 5 the full story of the saga that has enveloped the Government in yet another commercial scandal.

The full story clearly shows that there are a lot of important questions that remain unanswered and must be answered if the spirit of responsibility and accountability in politics is to be fostered.

There are questions as to why a Cabinet decision made in March last year was quietly reversed by June. The Minister on whose advice the March decision was taken had not been consulted or informed about the reversal.

There are also allegations that some VIP was bribed to get the new Cabinet decision. At the root of the scandal, we see in the 17 months of the PA government the same rascals who made their bucks and laughed their way to foreign banks during UNP rule. Those same rascals and racketeers are still riding high, though under a different colour.

That is the cancer in Sri Lankan party politics. The same crooks get round a new set of politicians. It's the same difference. Commissions to highlight misdeeds of the past are one thing. Openness, accountability and inquiries into ongoing misdeeds are another.

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