Small enough to be caught

July 15, 2013, 8:23 pm

Five persons including a mason and a watcher have been arrested for allegedly stealing a stock of steel and timber worth about half a million rupees from UNP MP Akila Viraj Kariyawasam’s house under construction in Kuliyapitiya. It is heartening that the police have acted swiftly though the aggrieved party is an Opposition politician. The culprits should be severely dealt with and the stolen building materials returned to the parliamentarian who has, we believe, included his new house in the declaration of his assets and liabilities in keeping with the law.

Ordinary people who steal things from politicians are thus nabbed and hauled up before courts in next to no time. But, there is no such high octane performance on the part of the guardians of the law as regards the crooked politicians who rob public funds to the tune of billions of rupees; they go scot free. A UNP government once had powerful ministers who were accused by no less a person than the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa of having ‘swallowed’ ships and ‘chugalugged’ Mahaweli. Under the UNP-led UNF government, several billion-rupee fraudulent deals took place such as the divestiture of key state ventures like Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation and Lanka Marine Services. They were subsequently declared null and void by the Supreme Court, but the politicians who obviously lined their pockets at the expense of the public got away with their crimes. Worse, the man who was instrumental in exposing those rackets in his capacity as the Chairman of Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) crossed over to the UNP! Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe is his name. Sadly, no one is wearing sackcloth and ashes!

The theft of steel from MP Kariyawasam’s construction site reminds us of the grand plunder of the Ceylon Transport Board (CTB) immediately after the UNP’s return to power in 1977. Hundreds of buses in running condition were fraudulently condemned, pushed out of depots and driven away. CTB workshops like the Werahera Depot were stripped of their assets by crooks who acquired them for a song; engines, spares, steel, tyres and aluminium were all sold and billions of rupees raked in. Many buses that could have been put back on roads after minor repairs were reduced to scrap metal and virtually given away to pro-UNP mudalalis. Racketeers laughed all the way to the bank and people are still suffering for want of an efficient state-owned bus service. Nobody has been held accountable for that daylight robbery.

As for the theft of timber, Ozymandian development projects were used as an excuse for clearing vast extents of thick forests so that the pro-UNP saw mill owners could make a killing and build their business empires. Illicit felling went on unabated with the police looking the other way as powerful politicians were behind timber rackets. But for some intrepid environmentalists who stood up to political thugs, even Sinharaja rainforest would have disappeared.

People may have thought they would be able to set a thief to catch a thief when they voted the SLFP into office in 1994. But, the plunder continued. The allocation of crown land for a private golf course, which was shot down by the Supreme Court, the sale of Colombo Gas and the Distilleries Corporation of Sri Lanka are some of the mega corrupt deals under SLFP-led governments. Racketeers have also been thriving on kickbacks from steel flyovers, road development projects, stock market scams, crooked petroleum deals etc. The only difference between the UNP rogues and their counterparts in the SLFP is that the latter wear patriotism on their sleeve.

The mason and others in hot water in Kuliyapitiya should have known better than to steal from a politician. They should have realised that they were small enough to be caught unlike the privileged thieves in politics who are too big to be jailed.

We look forward to the day when ordinary thieves like those who pilfer aggregates, steel and timber from construction sites will find themselves in the exalted company of big time politicians responsible for the theft of public wealth, in state pens. This, we do, knowing very well that we are only hoping against hope!