Cops rise from deep slumber

Saturday 20th August, 2022

The police have risen from a deep slumber like Rip Van Winkle. They have arrested Mervyn Silva for storming the state-owned Rupavahini Corporation headquarters in 2007 and roughing up a news director there. He was accompanied by some underworld characters during that incursion, which turned out to be a misadventure. They got their just deserts; the Rupavahini workers retaliated, and took them hostage. The police had to intervene to secure their release. Mervyn returned the worse for wear with his tail between his legs! It is puzzling why the police have resumed the probe into that incident all of a sudden. Has Mervyn ruffled the feathers of the leaders of the current dispensation. He has been letting out streams of invective against the Rajapaksas, whose sandals he used to lick until 2015.

Interestingly, when Mervyn was produced in court, the Judge, who released him without bail, happened to mention the fact that the latter had banned cattle slaughter in Kelaniya. True, Mervyn did so, and perhaps that is about the only good thing he has done as a politician, and he has benefited from the merit thereof in this life itself! If only he respected the rights of humans as well and refrained from harming them!

Mervyn is lucky that his sordid past is now almost forgotten, and only his intervention to save the poor bovines is remembered. He used to terrorise the public and treat the police like a doormat. He would openly issue orders to high-ranking police officers, who meekly did as he said. He once tied a public official to a tree in full view of the police as ‘punishment’ for being late for a meeting he had summoned! He would threaten media personnel and even damage their cameras, etc., in public, with impunity. He should have been arrested for his alleged involvement in attacks on television stations during the previous Rajapaksa government.

From 2005 to 2015, the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa protected Mervyn, who rose above the law as a result. A group of newspaper editors, at a meeting with President Rajapaksa, in the aftermath of the Rupavahini incident, asked why no legal action had been taken against Mervyn, and Rajapaksa had the chutzpah to claim that there was no need to do so because the Rupavahini workers had meted out punishment to Mervyn!

Rajapaksa was dependent on Mervyn for crushing anti-government protests and taming the Opposition and the media, and following his re-election in 2010 he went so far as to appoint the latter the Deputy Minister of Media! Journalists had to fight quite a battle to have him stripped of that post. We argued editorially that it was the Arachchi who incurred the wrath of the people if he did not care to keep his ferocious pet dog on a tight lease, and Mahinda was asking for trouble by giving Mervyn free rein.

Behind every successful criminal in this country there is a politician. Kalu Lucky, Gonawala Sunil, Soththi Upali, Beddegana Sanjeewa, Wambotta and other savage killers would not have been able to place themselves above the law but for the politicians who protected them. Ironically, those who used those underworld characters to do dirty political work are today pontificating to their rivals on the virtues of democracy and the rule of law. Maithripala Sirisena, who realised his presidential dream, by promising good governance, has had no qualms about granting Mervyn SLFP membership!

Now that the police are awake and busy probing Mervyn’s Rupavahini raid, let them be urged to resume investigations into the many crimes committed during the Rajapaksa government, the killings of journalists, land grabs, arson attacks on media institutions, and violence against the Opposition politicians. Terrible things that Mervyn is alleged to have done at the behest of his political masters must also not go uninvestigated.