Some
may believe that it was a masterstroke by the Government to go to Parliament
with the issue of the team appointed by the UN High Commission for Human Rights. The ruling party has the numbers. Secondly, the opposition (barring the TNA of
course) would be caught in a bind because if they oppose the Government’s
position it would amount to (or at least interpreted as amounting to)
complicity in ill-willed, pernicious, selective action against Sri Lanka by
sections of the international community which, in the end, would run counter to
the ‘reconciliation-need’ in whose name these moves are being made.
The
United National Party (UNP) in a recent media statement has pointed out the
obvious: the investigation will go ahead whether or not Sri Lanka
cooperates. The UNP points to ‘egregious
errors committed and lackadaisical inaction displayed’ by ‘the ruling family
cabal’ and blames this for inviting international scrutiny which, the UNP
implies, is something the party is not happy about.
The
statement thereafter elaborates on ‘egregious errors’ and ‘lackadaisical
inaction’ throwing into that heady brew acts of commission and omission that
have little to do with the matter at hand, the allegations regarding the final
stage of the operations against the LTTE.
Pointing to promises about implementing the horrendously flawed and
illegally constituted 13th Amendment serves no ‘national
purpose’. If the UNP was principled it
would insert the relevant caveats even while emphasizing the error of ‘making
pledges for the consumption of the international community’. Instead the UNP happily indulges in
Eelam-speak, throwing in the word ‘unified’ (not ‘unitary’, it must be noted)
along with ‘free’ and ‘democratic’.
The
UNP is correct: investigations will proceed with or without Government approval
(and of course with or without Parliament sanction). The UNP calls the Government to ‘cooperate
with the UNHRC’ even as the party opposes ‘international scrutiny’. That’s a contradiction. Moreover, it calls to question the true
intentions of the UNP including its claimed patriotism. Indeed, if the UNP is
so opposed to international scrutiny the party would not (as it has in the
statement) sing hosannas to the same busybodies, the pernicious ways of whose
movers and shakers Ranil Wickremesinghe cannot feign ignorance about. ‘Credibility’ moreover is something of a joke
in this day and age when the likes of known charlatans such as Navi Pillay
happen to be sitting in judgment.
On
the other hand the UNP is absolutely correct in pointing out that the
Government does not help Sri Lanka’s case by time and again thumbing its nose,
so to speak, at the edifice of justice in the country, from the Chief Justice
right down to your constable. The statement has its strength, therefore, not
in stated positions with respect to the UNHRC’s well-documented witch-hunt, but
as explication of general ills of the day.
Thus,
even while the Government can (as it probably would) tear to pieces the
statement on account of its confused and contradictory content, it would do
well to avail itself of the opportunity provided by the UNP’s pledge ‘to
support the Government to restore the systems and institutions of
democratic governance’. The UNP wants as
‘price’ the restoration of the 17th Amendment (flawed, but still an
important democratizing document), return to civilized values (nice wish, but
hard to legislate for) and the rule of law (eminently ‘doable’).
All
this needs to be done, not to satisfy Navi Pillay or any of the insatiable
loud-mouths in the international community but to stop and reverse the erosion
of democracy in Sri Lanka. If the Government so chooses it can call the UNP’s
bluff on this, set up a mechanism to review the constitution and institutional
arrangement and correct the flaws therein, with the support of the UNP, perhaps
even with Ranil Wickremesinghe heading such a body. The support of the TNA, the JVP and the DP,
all of whom share the views of the UNP on this issue, can be solicited and even
obtained. After all even the most ardent
SLFPer cannot morally oppose the correction of constitutional flaws and other
deficits that compromise the rule of law.
1 comments:
Malinda, can you change your options to include more than agree, disagree, beautiful and funny? That would be helpful.
Strongly agree. Especially the concluding para.
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