The assassination of any one is a serious matter. The assassination of a president of a country is extremely serious. The assassination of one President of Sri Lanka changed the course of history.
One person who never ever dreamt of becoming Presidents became Heads of State. D. B. Wijetunga who was considered by R. Premadasa, a loyal subservient acolyte who did not outwardly display any ambitions of furthering his position as the Prime Minister, after the assassination of R. Premadasa became the President of this country, and soon distanced himself from R. Premadasa and his policies.
Election meetings were held without the picture of Premadasa on the stage. Instead we saw the picture of DS, Dudley and JR on the stage. On the day on which President Premadasa's statue was unveiled, Mr. Wijetunga fell ill and was not present, but on the very next day he was seen at other places It was stated that Mr. Wijetunga did not attend the ceremonial opening of the statue because some interested politicians in the DUNF who had become advisors to him had allegedly planted a story with the NIB that President Wijetunga was to be assassinated by a section of the UNP faithful to the late President Premadasa.
Mr. Wijetunga removed B. Sirisena Cooray from his position as General Secretary of the UNP, who was the closest lieutenant and confidant of the late President.
There was no attempt on DB's life but he very successfully assassinated the political future of the present leaders of the UNP. His statement that there is no ethnic problem but only a terrorist problem, and that minorities are creepers, effectively destroyed the relationship that the UNP had built over the years with the minorities.
When President Premadasa was killed, the President's family, especially his daughter Dulanjalie Jayakody who always stoutly defended her father's services to the country, requested a commission to be appointed to probe the death of her father.
One can excuse Ms Jayakody as she firmly believed that a commission will reveal the mystery that surrounded her father's death. She may have thought that the canards that were being spread would be shown to be false. One was the suicide theory. A well orchestrated anti-Premadasa campaign spearheaded by the opposition left no stone unturned to create various theories about the death of R. Premadasa. These theories were not based on any substantive evidence or material unearthed by investigative journalism, but were based upon the hatred the elite of this country had against Mr. Premadasa. They could not resolve and accept the fact that a person like R. Premadasa from the grassroots would become the head of a country divided by petty caste and class differences.
Mr. Wijetunga replied to Ms. Jayakody, stating that no commission could be appointed as the investigations were not over. Later the thorough investigation that was done by the CID after recording statements from hundreds of witnesses showed the involvement of the LTTE in this assassination.
Though there was no publicity given to these investigations and what was found out by the officers, I am sure the Premadasa family would have known who was without any doubt responsible for the murder of R. Premadasa.
The Criminal Investigations Department recorded statements from a large number of people who gave a minute and a detailed description of how Prabhakaran ordered the assassination of Premadasa soon after the abortive peace talks. The LTTE won the confidence of President Premadasa. He believed that the LTTE would not harm him. The Tigers were successful in making President Premadasa's supporters and bodyguards believe that the real threat to the President's security came from RAW, the Indian intelligence agency. Premadasa was so naive as to believe this. The Intelligence agencies of Sri Lanka were fed up with false information by the LTTE on the motive of RAW to install Gamini Dissanayake as the President of this country by assassinating President Premadasa.
The late president apparently believed these canards. Though the intelligence agencies advised him that the LTTE hit squad was around, he discounted this possibility. He was a friend of the Tamils and sincerely believed in settling the ethnic issue. When the class conscious elite brought the abortive impeachment motion, the pro-LTTE EROS parliamentary group supported him. He thought like most politicians of yesterday and even today, the LTTE would dare not kill anyone who is friendly with it.
If you go by their track record they would never kill a politician who is a racist. They want politicians in the South to be anti-Tamil and anti-settlement. Mr. Wijetunga with his remarks alienated the Tamils but insured himself against a possible assassination bid from the LTTE. but Mr. Premadasa had complete faith in the LTTE and discounted the possibility of the LTTE having an agenda of killing the Sinhala leaders who were a threat to the Tamil nation.
When Lalith Athulathmudali was killed, he thought it was RAW that was responsible for it. It was Mr. Premadasa's conviction that Mr. Athulathmudali was killed by RAW which prompted him to get down experts from the Scotland Yard to Sri Lanka to assist the Sri Lankan investigators. Mr. Premadasa was convinced that Scotland Yard would prove his theory about RAW and the person who would most benefit from such a killing was Gamini Dissanayake.
When Ms. Jayakody appealed to the Wijetunga Government and the Chandrika Government to appoint a commission on the assassination of her late father she would not have ever imagined that this Government would take a clue from this appeal and appoint other commissions which defamed and degraded the name of Ranasinghe Premadasa.
Ranasinghe Premadasa according to these Commissions was indirectly responsible for the murder of Vijaya Kumaratunga and most of the evidence that was led at other Commissions was to paint a picture of a megalomaniac that ruled Sri Lanka.
Some members of the family are still appealing to the Government to appoint a commission to probe the assassination of R. Premadasa with special emphasis placed by them on the washing of the scene of the murder by the Fire Brigade on the instructions, according to them of a senior Cabinet Minister.
The Government was extremely pleased with this attitude of the Premadasa family. It gave full publicity to this appeal. As far as the Government is concerned this appeal is sufficient to have a media blitz on a certain section of the UNP. And if it does appoint a commission the net result would be the defamation of not only of R. Premadasa but his family and his policies.
When a similar request was made by the Gamini Dissanayake family the Government pretended to show some interest and when the family reiterated that the appointment of the commission should be made on certain conditions stipulated by them, the Government quietly left the matter to be forgotten.
Fact finding commissions have become a vogue of governments which have failed to deliver goods and not kept their promises. If Sri Lankan cricketers fail to win matches, or when a referendum or an election nears then the Government will resort to the last weapon left in their armoury to distract the public from the utter deprivation they are suffering. They will appoint some commissions and the Premadasa family has got into the act by giving the government food for thought to appoint a commission to go into the assassination of Mr. Premadasa, which may tarnish Mr. Premadasa's character, his services to the country and then finally the entire family will be defamed.
If the government is seriously interested in punishing those responsible for the death of Premadasa then there is a dossier with the A.G's department . There is also enough and more material in the Central Bank bombing case to indict Prabhakaran and his intelligence chief 'Pottu Amman' and a number of other LTTE agents now in custody for the murder of Ranasinghe Premadasa.
PTA and the rule of law
It has been announced by the Government that it will soon establish an additional High Court to try, hear, determine and pass sentence on suspects detained under the PTA. If the Government has sincere sympathy towards the Tamil population of this country it must immediately repeal the PTA.
Last week the Colombo High Court convicted a woman who had given birth to a child in remand. She has been in remand for more than a year, and the child has seen only the inside of a remand prison. Finally with all this ordeal the woman was charged only with failing to give information about Tamil terrorists. This clearly shows the lethargy and the inefficiency of all those concerned about charging persons taken into custody under the PTA.
The suspected terrorists are detained at Anuradhapura, Kalutara, Welikada and Magazine remand prisons. Nearly 223 suspects at Kalutara , 200 at Welikada and about 300 at the Magazine remand prisons are being detained under the PTA. When a person is arrested under the PTA he is detained for nearly 18 months, and the period is extended.
After the statement is recorded then a confession is recorded, and the statement is sent to the A.G. for indictment. Most of these suspects would never be charged under the normal law as there is no independent material to corroborate the confessions they have made.
Finally after a long period in detention the suspects are charged mainly with failure to give information about other terrorists. In addition, the A.G's department would file more than one indictment in different High Courts on the same confession. I believe even if one High Court rejects the confession, another High Court would accept it.
Kumar Ponnambalam who appears for such cases has written to Justice Minister G.L. Peiris expressing his views against the establishment of one High Court to deal with PTA cases. PTA is a draconian piece of legislation that was brought to arrest a situation that the legislature thought would soon end. If the government is of the opinion that PTA must remain for sometime, at least till the war is over, and at the same time is genuinely interested in appeasing the Tamils, then the government must bring legislation to amend the PTA act.
What is most lacking is judicial supervisions when the suspect is held in detention. If the initial confession is recorded after the arrest, then there is no reason why they cannot be indicted for an offence like withholding information from the security forces. As there is no judicial supervisions of review on these orders, the police and the AG's department can take their own time if they so wish to decide whether to indict the accused or not.
The suspects in order to press their grievances will file a Habeas Corpus case or a fundamental rights case. If the act is amended allowing detentions to be reviewed by court then the court will be in a position to give directions or time frames to file indictment. We have found with that experience this is the only way in which police officers and other public officers can be made to act.
Even sending the productions to the Government Analyst can be avoided if there is provision in the Act to record admissions like in section 420 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Keeping a person in detention for failing to give information about a terrorist to the authorities for over a year is a matter that no civilised society should subscribe to.
I believe the time has come for the Minister to seriously reconsider the provisions in the PTA and amend them suitably so that they meet basic requirements of the fundamental principle of justice and the rule of law which the Minister championed as a jurist soon after he left the University.
Return to the Editorial/Opinion contents page