{"id":241313,"date":"2025-03-23T12:34:51","date_gmt":"2025-03-23T07:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=241313"},"modified":"2025-04-06T01:16:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T19:46:13","slug":"the-anatomy-of-a-debasement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-anatomy-of-a-debasement\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anatomy Of A Debasement"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tisaranee Gunasekara<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey were careless people\u2026 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\u201d ~ <\/i>F Scott Fitzgerald \u2013 The Great Gatsby\"\"<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with a story.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The IGP did not say yes sir<\/i>. He didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

From that Osmund de Silva to this Deshabandu Tennakoon<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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. \u201cThe big fish in the pond are seldom held duly accountable,\u201d the judgement said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Bhante Shravasti Dhammika (S Dhammika thero) in his book Broken Buddha<\/i> 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: \u201cRather than the graceful image I had expected, a squat and somewhat ungainly form loomed before me\u2026somewhat lumpy and misshapen. It took me a few minutes to figure out the reason\u2026 Men clambered over the statue\u2026placing 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was what happened \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

Political Interference<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

When IGP Osmund de Silva refused to carry out SWRD Bandaranaike\u2019s illegal order, the Prime Minister punished him by sending him on compulsory retirement. \u201cOsmund 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…\u201d (Aftermath Of Bandaranaike\u2019s Assassination: INVESTIGATION TO INDICTMENT – Opinion | Daily Mirror<\/span><\/a><\/span>).<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s willingness to follow orders, whatever they may be.<\/p>\n

In its ruling, the Supreme Court called the actions of Deshabandu Tennakoon and other respondents a \u201cstark betrayal of the Rule of Law\u2026entirely repugnant to the virtues of a democratic republic.\u201d A democratic republic, but not this<\/b> 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Justice finally caught up with Mr. Tennakoon not because of anything the NPP\/JVP government did or didn\u2019t do but because <\/span>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\u2019t even a blip on the (politico-electoral) horizon.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Helping Hambantota story<\/a><\/span> was broken by The Sunday Leader<\/i>. The expose charged Mahinda Rajapaksa of channelling international tsunami aid amounting to 83million rupees from the official Prime Minister\u2019s national relief fund to the privately run Helping Hambantota fund. Subsequent to a complaint by UNP parliamentarian Kabir Hashim, the <\/span>AG\u2019s 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 \u2018unofficial investigation\u2019 and \u2018acting in an arbitrary manner\u2019 by questioning \u2018senior civil servant like PM\u2019s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga\u2019 for over five hours.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/span> that had it not been for the fateful supreme court decision, Mr. Rajapaksa would not have become president. \u201cThere 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\u2026 We did this expecting Mahinda Rajapaksa in turn would safeguard the rights of other people but it is not happening today\u2026 President Rajapaksa is now able to carry out wrongful acts because of the order we delivered then\u201d,<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

On both occasions, religion played a seminal role.<\/p>\n

The religious angle<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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 \u2018Yahapalana government\u2019 (a popular stance to take under President Gotabaya) and said, \u201cThe attack was carried out by Muslim extremists. The victims were Catholics. But on behalf of all of them, those punished are Sinhala-Buddhist officers\u201d<\/p>\n