Dan sepada?

Monday 21st June, 2021

Sri Lanka police, more often than not, draw heavy flak from the public as well as human rights activists for inaction. Complaints abound that they cite their involvement with pandemic control as the reason for their failure to carry out their regular duties and functions properly. But they have proved their critics wrong––for once. On Friday, ink was barely dry on a complaint against a person when they swooped on him and bundled him into a paddy wagon. What was the offence he had allegedly committed? He had asked Moratuwa Mayor Samanlal Fernando, over the phone, “Dan sepada?” (This is a rhetorical question Sri Lankans ask someone who, they think, has got his comeuppance.) The suspect has been described as one of Fernando’s many critics.

Mayor Fernando recently got his just deserts after kicking up a stink at a vaccination centre in Moratuwa, where he turned aggressive and tried to impose his will on a group of health workers, who refused to give first dibs on the jab to those who carried ‘chits’ issued by him. Exasperated and piqued, he barked at the health officials obstructing as he did their work. It became too embarrassing for his political masters to shield him, and he was arrested when he surrendered to the police. He was remanded and bailed out. A person who obstructed a group of Public Health Officers engaged in pandemic control, at Atalugama, last year, was sentenced to jail. Whether Mayor Fernando will face the full force of the law similarly remains to be seen.

The police just looked on while Fernando was ranting and raving, and obstructing the state officials engaged in administrating the life-saving vaccine. Thereafter, they patiently waited until he came to the police station of his own volition. But they arrested in double-quick time, the person who called him!

What is the law under which the aforementioned caller has been arrested? This is something the Bar Association of Sri Lanka should take up with the police, whom it has rightly urged not to abuse the law to suppress the people’s democratic rights.

If it is an offence that warrants arrest to ask ‘dan sepada?’ from someone over the phone or otherwise, then the question is why no action has been taken against former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who kept on asking the people the same question, in public, from 2015 to 2019, while they were suffering under the yahapalana government, which blundered on every front. In fact, it is he who popularised this rhetorical question, which became the main campaign slogan of the SLPP to all intents and purposes. The boot is now on the other foot, and the current Opposition is asking it from the people, who are facing numerous hardships, having voted the SLPP into office.

Interestingly, the person who asked the public, ‘Dan sepada?’ went on to become the Prime Minister, and the elector who asked the same question from a local government politician has got arrested!

It is evident from the arrest in question that the police can act stunningly fast if they choose to do so. If only there had been the same high-octane performance, which smacks of selective efficiency, on their part when they received warnings of the impending Easter Sunday attacks in 2019, or at least when they launched a probe after the tragedy. If they had arrested Zahran, the leader of the National Thowheed Jamaath, when they were informed that he would lead a group of terrorists on a suicidal mission to attack churches, etc., the tragedy could have been prevented. The mastermind of the carnage is believed to be at large, and the police are groping in the dark, and making false claims.

People had very high hopes when they elected the present government, whose leaders promised them the moon. But today they cannot even ask their beloved representatives a question over the phone without getting arrested. The aforementioned poor elector from Moratuwa is lucky that the person he telephoned is only a glorified local government politician. Had he asked that question from someone in the top echelons of government, perhaps fighter jets would have been scrambled. So much for the people’s ability to exercise their democratic rights including the freedom of expression under the current regime, which has got stuck in the same rut as the yahapalana dispensation and lost direction.

Dan sepada?