{"id":177479,"date":"2017-05-17T13:46:10","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T08:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=177479"},"modified":"2017-05-21T00:01:20","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T18:31:20","slug":"sri-lanka-emergence-of-startling-evidence-of-a-failed-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sri-lanka-emergence-of-startling-evidence-of-a-failed-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka: Emergence Of Startling Evidence Of A Failed State"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nagananda Kodituwakku<\/a> \u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Nagananda Kodituwakku<\/p><\/div>\n

In the Republic of Sri Lanka, the Supreme Law, the Constitution, says that every person is equal before law and entitled to equal protection of law [Article 12 (1)]<\/p>\n

This means that the application of uniform approach for offenders who commit criminal offences where the characteristics of the offence is the same or identical. Application of this uniformity principle is of paramount important in any democracy to have people\u2019s confidence in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

The revenue protection laws in Sri Lanka, for instance the Customs ordinance, provide severe penalties and forfeitures (treble the value) for offenders concerned in revenue crimes. These laws have been enacted to deter or prevent the commission of revenue crimes and to protect the important government revenue that the Customs Department collects for the state, which is now stands at 60% of the government\u2019s total tax revenue.<\/p>\n

In addition, there are other important laws in place to deter the people who abuse public office causing losses to the government. For instance the relatively new criminal offence of CORRUPTION introduced through the Bribery Act, provides that any person abuse public office holds purely on trust causing a loss to the government or commits an act to benefit or favor for himself or other commits an offence of Corruption [Section 70].<\/p>\n

Selling of MP tax-free car permit is obviously a measure introduced by the successive corrupt governments that abused the people\u2019s sovereignty to facilitate the MPs to defraud the public funds. This is the hard fact acknowledged by the Minister of Finance Ravi Karunanayake himself in his maiden budget speech delivered in the Parliament on 20th Nov 2015, where he revealed that the government incur over 40 billions of revenue loss due to the abuse of these tax-free permits.<\/p>\n

It is a proven fact that every dishonest MP who sells a tax-free permit for unjust enrichment (see the list attached) does have the knowledge that the buyers (who are not entitled to enjoy this tax-free permits issued only to MPs in the public interest to import a vehicle to discharge their office effectively) would abuse the permit to defraud the government revenue.<\/p>\n

Now you are invited to examine the content of the letter originated by the CIABOC<\/a> (in reply to the complaint made on the abuse of tax free car permits by the MPs)\u00a0to judge for yourselves about the emergence of startling evidence of a failed state, where the Rule of Law has been completely undermined by the very state organ created for combatting of bribery and corruption, effectively riddling the public confidence in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

In this background it is inevitable that people will continue to make serious complaints to the Human Rights Body in Geneva that they have no confidence and lost their trust in the main organs of the government, particularly those who hold office in the Executive and the Legislature as they openly violate their constitutional pledge made to the people to perform the offices they hold faithfully, according to the Constitution and the Law.\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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