It is not only the executive president who enjoys legal immunity; ministers and their kith and kin in the good books of the powers that be also do. In this socialist, democratic republic, everyone is equal before the law, the Constitution tell us, but what it has left unsaid is that the ruling party politicians are more equal than others like the Pigs in Orwell’s dystopian novel, Animal Farm. Ministerial fathers make a mockery of the law by joining their unruly brats in demolishing night clubs with absolute impunity. Their progeny carry out such operations under their own steam later in life.

Minister Mervyn Silva got away with a cheque fraud to which he pleaded guilty in court in 2007 thanks to the then Attorney General. On Wednesday, his son, Malaka, walked to freedom in a similar manner. When he and a friend turned themselves in to the police following an attack on an army major, the discerning public did not expect them to be punished. Later the major buckled under pressure and recanted his statement to the police. He has put the entire army to shame!

That the Attorney General’s Department has been reduced to a mere appendage of the government is common knowledge. It shamelessly lets itself be used to get political dregs in trouble off the hook. Why that once respected institution was brought under the president’s control should be patently clear now. The very custodians of the law are abusing it and whom could the public turn to for justice? When the state prosecutors side with offenders, good judges become helpless.

The same goes for the long arm of the law cohabiting with the ruling party. The police have been aiding and abetting violent politicians and their offspring who harm others. What they have been doing to the hapless public is now happening to them. Karmic forces at work, eh? DIG Ravi Waidyalankara’s son has moved the Human Rights Commission against some police officers who, he says, did not properly handle investigations into a recent incident in the East, where he was assaulted by a group of youth led by a minister’s son. It is a supreme irony that he has had to take this kind of action against some police personnel working under his father. If this is the plight of a very senior police officer’s son, the predicament of the ordinary people and their children goes without saying.

Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne told Parliament a few moons ago that politicians were involved in the narcotics trade. But, none of them has so far been brought to justice for that offence. Even lower-rung politicians and their goons arrested for raping and murdering women are released while tough action is taken against children for minor offences. It was only a few weeks ago that a schoolgirl was arrested and produced in courts for picking a few coconuts from her neighbour’s garden to raise funds for school repairs.

In Kilinochchi, the Uthayan newspaper office has come under attack. Several workers have sustained injuries and the place has suffered considerable damage. One may take exception to what that newspaper publishes but its right to express dissenting views should be respected. There are laws available for the ordinary public as well as politicians to deal with newspapers that violate their rights and no one must be allowed to take the law into his hands for that purpose. What happened on Wednesday was a terrorist attack. The LTTE has been defeated but a different kind of terrorism is rearing its head. Kilinochchi is a garrison town and the attackers could not have operated without the knowledge of the army and the police.

A fish rots from the head down. The government continues to protect lawbreakers, some of whom are in the garb of lawmakers. Criminals have risen above the law by virtue of their political connections. Sri Lanka is a paradise lost.

Justitia is brain-dead and the government should stop dillydallying and accord her a grand funeral without keeping her on a heart-lung machine any longer.

island.lk