VIP security should not be taken for granted - EDITORIAL

o many things have been said and written about the present controversy over security provided to former President Mahinda Rajapaksa since the first media report last week said the army personnel were to be removed from his security detail. In fact the issue now has become purely a political issue even for the loyalists of the former President rather than a security concern.
Highways and Higher Education Minister Lakshman Kiriella denied the reports about the change in the former president’s security detail when the matter was raised by the latter’s loyalists in the Parliament last week. However, Defence Secretary Karunasena Hettiarachchi had later told the media that the army personnel in the former President’s security contingent would be replaced by the Special Task Force (STF) commandos of the police who are trained in VIP security, since deploying of army for personal security was illegal. President Maithripala Sirisena too had told at a meeting in Bibile that neither he nor Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had been provided with army personnel in their security details. 

On the other hand, it was the members of the so-called Joint Opposition who made the former President vulnerable by revealing the strength of the security contingent of their leader, if in fact his security had been or was to be downgraded. Also they must be able to explain the difference between the security provided by the STF commandos and the army commandos. 
Removal of Army personnel assigned to the former President’s security contingent had been an issue during last December as well. Then his loyalists tied up the issue with the government’s move to release the LTTE suspects. Hilariously now, within four months, the group has forgotten that and are questioning the change in the security detail citing the recent discovery of suicide kits from Chavakachcheri. 

It is appropriate to reproduce a part of the Editorial we published in December in connection with this.
“In Sri Lanka, it was always the party politics and not the real security threat assessments that had been the criterion for the strength of security provided for various people, especially for politicians. Three classic cases in point were the withdrawal of security provided for three war veterans who were in the forefront in fighting the northern war as well as the southern insurgency. 
“Despite repeated requests for adequate security, Chandrika Kumaratunga’s People’s Alliance (PA) government reduced retired Major General Lucky Algama’s security once he teamed up with the UNP to contest the 2000 Parliamentary elections during late 1990s. He along with 10 others had been killed by an LTTE suicide bomber at an election rally at Ja-ela on December 18, 1999; one day prior to Kumaratunga herself was targeted by another suicide bomber at the Colombo Town Hall grounds.
“Major General Janaka Perera, another high ranking army official who earned the wrath of both the southern as well as northern rebels had to go to the Supreme Court requesting adequate security, as his security had been reduced by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime after he had joined the UNP following his retirement. He too was killed along with another 26 people, including his wife by a LTTE suicide bomber on October 6, 2008 at a party office in Anuradhapura.
“Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka who spearheaded the victorious war against the LTTE once claimed that his security was reduced overnight from 600 to 6 Army personnel once he decided to politically challenge Mahinda Rajapaksa. Now the same Rajapaksa is lamenting that his security has been reduced.”

Mahinda Rajapaksa might have reduced the security of his political opponents and opened the door for the LTTE to wipe them out. But that does not justify in any way a repetition by this government which pledged to be different from the Rajapaksa regime. One should not forget that Mahinda Rajapaksa is a man most hated or one of the most hated by the remnants of the LTTE. Also one has to remember that a convict of the Manamperi rape and murder case in 1971 had been stabbed to death during the JVP’s second insurrection,17 years after the incident, even after he had completed his jail term for the crime. Hence, the security of the former President or any other VIPs should not be a political issue for the ruling party or for the Opposition.