By Tisaranee Gunasekara –

“They were careless people… They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” ~ F Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

Let’s begin with a story.

Once upon a time, the Prime Minister of an island-nation was plagued by an outbreak of labour unrest. He summoned the police chief and ordered him to break the strike by arresting the trade union leaders and locking them up.

The IGP did not say yes sir. He didn’t get the trade union leaders arrested under the PTA (for colluding with Terrorists/planning terrorist actions) or for possessing drugs/illegal weapons. Instead, this IGP told the Prime Minister that he would not break the law by fabricating evidence and making illegal arrests. The Prime Minister berated the IGP for his disloyalty. The IGP pointed out that his loyalty was to the law of the land.

That land was Ceylon in 1956. The Prime Minister who gave the illegal order was SWRD Bandaranaike and the IGP who sacrificed his career rather than violate the law was Osmund de Silva.

From that Osmund de Silva to this Deshabandu Tennakoon.

Mr. Tennakoon is a record-holder many times over. Not only is he the first IGP to hide from the police and the first IGP to be arrested and remanded. He is also the first IGP to be faulted by the supreme court for violating the constitution. In December 2023, the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in a fundamental rights case filed in 2011. The Court found Mr. Tennakoon guilty of personally torturing a suspect who had been unlawfully arrested and unlawfully detained under his orders.

The Court ordered the state and the respondents to pay compensation to the petitioner and asked the National Police Commission and other authorities to take appropriate action against Deshabandu Tennakoon and other respondents. “The big fish in the pond are seldom held duly accountable,” the judgement said.

Before the apex court gave its judgement, Mr. Tennakoon had been faulted by a presidential commission and an internal police inquiry for severe dereliction of duty.

Mr. Tennakoon was the DIG in charge of Colombo when the Easter Sunday massacre took place. The Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the attack had recommended that disciplinary action be taken against him and several other officials for failing to stop the attack. An internal police investigation which commenced in 2020 also fingered Mr. Tennakoon (plus other officials) for dereliction of duty and recommended that they be charge-sheeted. These recommendations were sent by the Public Service Commission to the IGP Chandana Wickremeratne in June 2021. Mr. Tennakoon and others were charge-sheeted in May 2023.

Had the police complied with the Supreme Court decision, presidential commission recommendations or the conclusions of its own internal investigation, the tragicomedy of an IGP on the run could have been avoided.

Bhante Shravasti Dhammika (S Dhammika thero) in his book Broken Buddha writes of a visit he made to the Mahamuni Buddhist Temple in Mandalay to see its renowned statue, supposedly an actual portrayal of the Buddha himself: “Rather than the graceful image I had expected, a squat and somewhat ungainly form loomed before me…somewhat lumpy and misshapen. It took me a few minutes to figure out the reason… Men clambered over the statue…placing the small squares of gold leaf on it which devotees passed up to them. Over the centuries, the gradual accumulation of this gold has formed a thick uneven crust over the statue, so as to obscure its original shape.”

This was what happened – and continues to happen – to the Lankan state in general and Lankan police in particular. Innumerable violations of law, order, and due process, not to mention decency and honour, had misshaped and warped the system and most of its institutions into their current debasement. Deshabandu Tennakoon is not the problem; he is merely the most extreme symptom of a rot that has been in the making for years.

Political Interference

When IGP Osmund de Silva refused to carry out SWRD Bandaranaike’s illegal order, the Prime Minister punished him by sending him on compulsory retirement. “Osmund de Silva… departed proudly after re-iterating to his fellow police officers to always uphold the law and not adopt extra-legal measures at the behest of politicians…” (Aftermath Of Bandaranaike’s Assassination: INVESTIGATION TO INDICTMENT – Opinion | Daily Mirror).

Unfortunately, his fate would have sent an antithetical signal to succeeding generations of police personnel. An IGP was sacked for being principled; being principled was, therefore, not a sensible career-move. That mindset spread over the police force, first in dribbles, eventually in waves, normalising illegality, indecency, and opportunism. The outcome was a toxic web of patron-client relationships between politicians and cops and senior cops and junior cops, aimed at power and advancement, irrespective of the cost.

Deshabandu Tennakoon, whatever his dereliction of duties towards the public, was assiduous in seeking and dispensing patronage. His role in the May 9 attack on Gota-go-gama indicated how far he was willing to go to satisfy his then chief patrons, the Rajapaksas. The illegal arrests in 2010, which led to his 2023 conviction by the Supreme Court, seemed to have been made on behalf of an army sergeant-major, probably a client. One of Mr. Tennakoon’s patrons, Tiran Alles, left no stone unturned to get him appointed as the IGP. President Wickremesinghe resisted for a while, then gave in, maybe hoping to benefit politically from Mr. Tennakoon’s willingness to follow orders, whatever they may be.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court called the actions of Deshabandu Tennakoon and other respondents a “stark betrayal of the Rule of Law…entirely repugnant to the virtues of a democratic republic.” A democratic republic, but not this democratic republic. Mr. Tennakoon is a progeny of Sri Lanka as it has become, born and nurtured in the corrupting interface between the state and the political system. He is also a symbol of what we are, as a nation, and a society. That was why he couldn’t be apprehended, why he could remain in hiding for almost 20 days, and then present himself at the Matara magistrate court on a day of his own choosing.

Justice finally caught up with Mr. Tennakoon not because of anything the NPP/JVP government did or didn’t do but because we still have a relatively independent judiciary. The same judiciary which prevented Deshabandu Tennakoon from functioning as the IGP in July 2024 (when Ranil Wickremesinghe was president). The same judiciary which dared to go against political, societal, and religious currents on numerous occasions, long before an Anura Kumara Dissanayake presidency wasn’t even a blip on the (politico-electoral) horizon.

Political interference almost killed this independence several times. The Rajapaksa depredations need no reminder, especially the illegal impeachment of chief justice Shirani Bandaranayke. Less remembered is the decision by Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga to elevate Sarath Silva first to the post of AG and then, in 1999, to the post of chief justice. She and the country paid dearly for that choice, for without a Sarath Silva court Rajapaksa rule might not have happened.

The Helping Hambantota story was broken by The Sunday Leader. The expose charged Mahinda Rajapaksa of channelling international tsunami aid amounting to 83million rupees from the official Prime Minister’s national relief fund to the privately run Helping Hambantota fund. Subsequent to a complaint by UNP parliamentarian Kabir Hashim, the AG’s Department ordered the CID to carry out an investigation. The CID obtained court permission to investigate bank accounts associated with Helping Hambantota. Mahinda Rajapaksa appealed to the supreme court saying that his fundamental rights were being violated. In September 2005, a bench headed by Sarath Silva ordered the CID to temporary halt the investigation. Mr. Silva accused the CID of carrying out an ‘unofficial investigation’ and ‘acting in an arbitrary manner’ by questioning ‘senior civil servant like PM’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga’ for over five hours.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, in characteristic fashion, double-crossed Sarath Silva by denying him another term as chief justice. Mr. Silva then became born again as a Rajapaksa-critic. In 2012, he publicly stated that had it not been for the fateful supreme court decision, Mr. Rajapaksa would not have become president. “There are many complaints that it was I who was responsible to (sic) bring Mahinda Rajapaksa into power. I admit it since Mahinda Rajapaksa was freed to become president because of this decision by the supreme court… We did this expecting Mahinda Rajapaksa in turn would safeguard the rights of other people but it is not happening today… President Rajapaksa is now able to carry out wrongful acts because of the order we delivered then”,

If SWRD Bandaranaike did not replace seasoned policeman Osmund de Silva with a civil servant (and his bridge partner) as IGP, the conspiracy to assassinate him might have been uncovered. Had Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga adhered to the seniority principle and appointed renowned jurist Mark Fernando as chief justice instead of Sarath Silva, the disaster that was Rajapaksa rule might have been avoided.

On both occasions, religion played a seminal role.

The religious angle

Deshabandu Tennakoon had once been a monk, yet another first for a Lankan IGP. When the presidential commission on the Easter Sunday attack faulted him for not doing enough to foil the bombings, he and about 20 senior and junior cops senior similarly faulted by the commission visited the Asgiriya chief prelate seeking succour. Speaking to the chief monks, Mr. Tennakoon blamed the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government’s focus on reconciliation. Addressing the media afterwards, another police official made the kind of remark that would have led to his immediate suspension in any actually democratic land. He too heaped blame on the ‘Yahapalana government’ (a popular stance to take under President Gotabaya) and said, “The attack was carried out by Muslim extremists. The victims were Catholics. But on behalf of all of them, those punished are Sinhala-Buddhist officers”

So Sinhala-Buddhist policemen: another strand in this story of debasement. Osmund de Silva was appointed IGP in 1955. His promotion was made on merit; he just happened to be a Buddhist. Having sacked him, PM Bandaranaike wanted not just a yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir IGP, but a Sinhala-Buddhist IGP. Since the officers next in line in terms of seniority were all Christians, “he brought in an outsider — his friend and civil servant Walter Abeykoon” (Aftermath Of Bandaranaike’s Assassination: INVESTIGATION TO INDICTMENT – Opinion | Daily Mirror).

Retired DIG Gamini Gunawardane wrote about the chaos that resulted from the Prime Minister’s inane appointment. “Senior Police Officers met in conference to decide what to do. They considered the first option: the entire Executive Corps should resign en masse. They decided against it because it would cause the entire police service to collapse. Next they surveyed the Executive Corps for the most senior officer among them who was a Buddhist. The only officer they could find was the young SP, Stanley Senanayake. The senior officers resolved that they would make representations to the Prime Minister that they were prepared to work under Stanley Senanayake who was junior to all of them rather than having to work under an outsider who knew nothing of the police…They met the PM in delegation… But SWRD brushed aside these representations and appointed his nominee. He ultimately paid with his life for his folly. Not only he, his wife too nearly paid the price in 1962 when the civilian IGP was found playing bridge at the Orient Club on that fateful night blissfully ignorant of the coup d’état to overthrow the government that was about to be launched! Their daughter too paid a similar price under an IGP of her choice over the heads of five seniors, all competent men. She survived losing only an eye”.

From loyal Sinhala-Buddhist policemen to loyal Sinhala-Buddhist chief justices.

In 1999, Mark Fernando had all the qualifications to be the next chief justice. He was the senior-most judge on the bench and he had delivered a number of landmark judgements on citizens’ rights, from freedom of speech to freedom against torture, arbitrary arrest and detention. Yet, in presidential eyes, he had two ‘disqualifications’. One was his fierce independence; the other was his Catholicism. The president would have ignored the latter had Justice Fernando been the corruptible type. Thus the elevation of Sarath N Silva, a perfect blend of compliance and Buddhist piety of the exhibitionist variety.

Deshabandu Tennakoon was the logical outcome of this process of personal, institutional, and systemic debasement.

When the Supreme Court imposed a temporary suspension on him in July 2024, a group of monks, led by Agalakada Sirisumana thero, organised a protest. “When Buddhist leaders are appointed they should be supported,” one monk said. Agalakada thero and Bellanwila Dhammarathana thero, were amongst three-monk petitioners who in September 2024 asked the Supreme Court to allow Deshabandu Tennakoon to resume functions as the IGP. By that time, his role in the attack on W15 hotel in Weligama was known. But for the monks, as for SWRD Bandaranaike and his daughter Chandrika only one thing mattered: he was a compliant Buddhist.

In the dishonourable saga of the man who is still the IGP (why hasn’t the NPP/JVP government taken steps to suspend if not remove him?) can be seen two strands of our downfall: the abandonment of principles for political loyalty and expediency and the equation of nation with Sinhala and Buddhist. If those two root causes are not dealt with no change of presidents/governments will solve our ills.