Politicians, be responsible when accusing opponents

One would wonder if our politicians really want to eradicate crime, given the irresponsible statements they make about crime before the television cameras, irrespective of the party they are affiliated to. They always politicise the violent incidents or drug related incidents, implicating their political rivals or opponents. 

When a group religious fanatics went berserk on the Easter Sunday of 2019, killing nearly 300 people, in three churches and three star-class hotels, our politicians attempted their best to implicate all their adversaries to the carnage. 

The main Opposition of the day, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) accused the ruling parties that they had weakened the intelligence apparatuses leading to the terrorist attacks, whereas relevant intelligence authorities had apparently issued prior warnings about a possible attack to almost all political leaders,with precise details of the culprits, the modus operandi, and  possible targets. 

Needless to say, the government of the day had to take  responsibility to any such acts of violence, but the Opposition portrayed a picture where the ruling parties, mainly the United National Party (UNP), had been hand in glove with the terrorists. Interestingly and ironically, two years later, the leaders of the same ruling party who had by the time been thrown to the Opposition, were heard accusing the SLPP that they had assumed  power this time to orchestrate a heinous crime, thus creating a situation that would facilitate them to come to power. This political football game has by now confused the entire country on what really happened on that fateful day. 

Following the discovery of container loads of some chemicals  said to be used to produce Crystal Methamphetamine (ice) at a garden in Middeniya last week, a former Pradeshiya Sabha member of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna(SLPP), Piyal Manamperi, was arrested. Immediately, Deputy Minister of Public Security, Sunil Watagala showed at a press briefing pictures of politicians associated with the suspect, apparently implicating them also to the 50,000 kilogramme chemical haul. 

The SLPP announced that it had suspended its ex-PS member from the party immediately after his arrest. The National Organiser of the party Namal Rajapaksa also argued that Mohamed Ibrahim, the father of two suicide bombers of the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks were associated with the ruling National People’s Power (NPP) prior to the attacks. He also attempted to find a link between the chemicals and the containers that have been released from the Colombo harbour in January, without proper inspection, despite the police having already denied any such links. 

A group of people after lodging a complaint with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) over the implication of the SLPP to the Middeniya chemical haul rightly told media that this is not the first time a person involved in politics was arrested for an alleged crime and such arrests have rarely anything to do with his party.Throwing a compelling argument, they said that any political party has to work with the people of this country among whom there are inevitably good apples and bad apples.

The deputy minister Watagala, being an Attorney-at-Law, showed pictures of politicians taken with Manamperi to suggest that those politicians have a hand in the chemical haul incident. The PS member might have taken pictures with hundreds of people with camera phones. The same happened in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks where people found pictures of their political opponents taken with Zahran Hashim, the leader of the National Thawheed Jama’ath (NTJ) that carried out the attacks, as if the NTJ leader had been a terrorist from the days he was in his mother’s womb.

Similarly, Namal Rajapaksa, another lawyer,  very well knows that Ibrahim was ironically released on bail in 2021, when his party was in power. Ibrahim was not indicted yet, though the SLPP was in power for five years since the terror attacks were carried out. He had been presented with various awards including Desha Keerthi award by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Rathnasiri Wickremanayake, Ministers G.L.Peiris, Piyasena Gamage and Sujeeva Senasinghe at various occasions for his business successes, long before the JVP included him in their national list.

Nevertheless, needless to say, the current numbers of shootings and killings mainly by the underworld gangs is alarming. But the last year’s numbers are still above the tally for this year, a fact that is suppressed by the politicians and the media. 

Politicians must stop passing judgements against their adversaries without substantiating their allegations against the latter. Doing so, in the long run,would hinder informed and fair decisions by the people at future elections. Ultimately, “any political party has to work with the people of this country among whom there are inevitably good apples and bad apples.”

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