Saturday 23rd December, 2023

All citizens are said to be equal before the law. But the ruling party politicians in Sri Lanka are more equal than others, just like the Pigs in Orwell’s dystopian novella, Animal Farm. The selective efficiency of the police in making arrests in connection with the immunoglobulin scam in the Health Ministry is a case in point.

The CID has so far arrested several health officials and former Health Secretary Janaka Chandraguptha over the aforesaid pharmaceutical racket. Chandragupta would have got off scot-free but for pressure from the Opposition, health workers’ trade unions, civil society organisations, and the media.

The health sector trade unions have been calling for the arrest of Keheliya Rambukwella, on whose watch as the Health Minister, the corrupt deals at issue took place. The government has ignored these calls. Rambukwella is blaming others for the immunoglobulin racket.

Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles, who has undertaken the ambitious task of eliminating the netherworld of crime and drugs in six months, has told the media that Rambukwella will be arrested if there is irrefutable evidence to prove the latter’s involvement in the aforesaid procurement racket.

He has insulted the intelligence of the public. The police are not so independent and impartial in this country as to ascertain evidence against politicians much less arrest them. They baulk at taking action against government members for obvious reasons.

One may recall that in December 2016, there was a real hullabaloo over a video footage of the then IGP Pujith Jayasundara telling someone over his mobile phone, at a public event in Ratnapura, that he had ordered the Financial Crimes Investigations Division (FCID) not to arrest a certain Nilame or the lay custodian of a holy shrine. The police chief looked very servile and spoke in an extremely reverential tone.

The Yahapalana government did not care to order a probe into the shameful incident which proved that it was keeping the police under its thumb and manipulating the FCID. Incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe was the Prime Minister in that government.

Many arrests are made daily these days as part of the ongoing operations against the underworld. Houses are searched and dozens of youth rounded up and bundled into police vehicles merely on suspicion. There have also been instances where schoolchildren in primary grade were arrested on suspicion of stealing coconuts of all things. A schoolgirl was arrested and hauled before court in Kalutara, some years ago, for having allegedly filched a five-rupee coin from a neighbour’s house to buy something to eat!

So, the question is why Rambukwella cannot be arrested on suspicion over pharmaceutical rackets that have caused deaths of patients and cost the cash-strapped state coffers billions of rupees. After all, Kalinga Indatissa, PC, told the Maligakanda Magistrate on 15 Nov., 2023 that the mastermind behind the procurement of substandard immunoglobulin was in the Cabinet. He dared the CID to arrest the culprit. Have the police commenced an investigation into Indatissa’s statement? If not, why?

Will Minister Alles ensure that the police launch a probe into senior lawyer Indatissa’s statement that was made before a judge? Unless he does so, every minister will become a suspect in the eyes of the public, and the government will be seen to be shielding corrupt ministers.