The Rajapaksas – Resurgence or Retribution?

Opinion
By Editor_1
Namal Rajapaksa arriving at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) in Colombo, accompanied by a large gathering of slogan shouting people - facebook.com

By Kassapa

Forget the 78th anniversary of Independence. This week was all about the Rajapaksas. There was former first lady Shiranthi Rajapaksa being summoned to the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) to answer questions about the ‘Siriliya’ account she held. Simultaneously, son Namal was being interrogated by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) on alleged links to underworld figure ‘Kehelbaddara Padme’.

Meanwhile the Colombo Fort Magistrate allowed police to issue a ‘Red Alert’ for Namal’s cousin and Chamal Rajapaksa’s son Shamindra for allegedly taking a bribe in the infamous Airbus deal. He is, however, reportedly in the United States and safe from the reach of the long arm of Sri Lankan law, at least for now.

It was intriguing to witness the appearance of the Rajapaksa duo, Shiranthi and Namal, in the heart of Colombo at different branches of the police. They were accompanied by a large gathering of slogan shouting people at each venue. Shockingly, the slogans were what we have heard before: political victimization of the ‘leader who saved the country from terrorism’. Mother and son went in to the police amidst cheers and came out four hours later to even more cheers.

It was clearly an organized crowd and not a spontaneous outpouring of support. Some of those present, when interviewed by the media, said they didn’t know what the charges against Ms. Rajapaksa were or why Namal Rajapaksa was being summoned but had arrived because they had been ‘asked to come’. So, full marks for organization but zero for making it look authentic.

There are questions that arise from this, both for the government and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). For the Rajapaksas, they should have known this was coming. Punishing the corrupt and the criminal was a key election pledge of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in his election campaign as well as of the National Peoples’ Power (NPP) during the general election. Perhaps knowing what was in store, Basil Rajapaksa fled the country. Those who remained now face consequences.

Namal Rajapaksa, for all intents and purposes the de facto leader of the SLPP, and his advisors cannot complain about not being prepared for this. The younger Rajapaksa was summoned only for questioning with regard to statements made by ‘Kehelbaddara Padme’, he was not an accused. So, why bother to stage a show of strength, with people mobbing him every inch of the way until he entered the portals of the police? There are other cases where he is indeed an accused, such as the one related to the Krrish transaction.

Will Rajapaksa stage similar dramas every time he is called to appear before the police? Will that not lead to ‘protest fatigue’, both to those who are participating and those watching?

The theatre enacted for Shiranthi Rajapaksa was even less convincing. She arrived with Mahinda Rajapaksa, but the latter did not leave the vehicle, dropping off his wife instead. A misguided individual called her a modern ‘Vihara Maha Devi’ which led to the former first lady being mocked mercilessly on social media, provoking mirth and disdain. If a public relations company was responsible for this, they would be fired immediately.

What all this fuss around mother and son attending the FCID and the CID respectively reveals is that the Rajapaksas haven’t still got the message the masses gave them at the last election. They are being prosecuted for acts allegedly done by them during their long years in government. By all means, they are entitled to the presumption of innocence but the one thing they shouldn’t be doing is trying to make the investigations a political spectacle and playing the victim card. That is not what the majority of voters want to see. They would have been much better off, had they attended the police and left in a dignified manner, without the mobs baying for the government’s blood. That would have been more convincing of their purported innocence. Alas, they are sticking to the same script and may end up with the same results.

There is a lesson in this for the government too. To the Sri Lankan public and the silent majority watching unobtrusively and waiting patiently for an outcome, what they saw last Tuesday (27) was nothing new. They have seen it all before, perhaps on a less dramatic scale: suspects being hauled before the Police, questioned, then either released or remanded first and then bailed out. That was during the ‘yahapalanaya’ era. The problem was, nothing happened after that. Prosecutions were blocked expertly through secret backroom deals between those within the ‘yahapalanaya’ government and the Rajapaksas and their allies. That was a main reason for ‘yahapalanaya’ to fail.

The government will argue that it is early days still and there will not be a repeat of this. We are not so sure. A fifth of its term is already over. These cases, now dozens of years old, are progressing at snail’s pace. For instance, hearings in the Krrish case are being held only several times a year. All Namal Rajapaksa has to do is to get his lawyers to drag the case from one hearing date to another. The long-time lapse between the alleged offences and the court hearings also mean that the trail of evidence is much weaker and prosecution that much more difficult. This is why the government is finding that prosecuting Ranil Wickremesinghe for his more recent trip to Britain is much easier than pursuing the Rajapaksas.

So far, the NPP has proved beyond reasonable doubt that it is still learning on the job: they are often clumsy with their deeds and worse with their words. That they have never been in power is not a mitigating factor in the eyes of the public. Already we saw how an overenthusiastic leaking of information revealing Chamal Rajapaksa was to be charged led to a key witness not providing the required evidence.

Nevertheless, they cannot afford to fail again. If the cases against the Rajapaksas collapse for whatever reason, there is every likelihood the government would too, at the next election. That is the moral of this story.    

– counterpoint.lk

Editor_1
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