No sooner had Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody been indicted for corruption than he was released on bail last Friday. The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), which filed charges against him, has alleged that in 2016, while serving as the Manager of the Procurement and Import Division of the Ceylon Fertiliser Company, he committed an act of corruption, causing a loss of Rs. 8,859,708 to the state; he influenced a procurement process related to the refurbishment of the company’s Hunupitiya warehouse to confer an undue benefit on a private contractor.
The JVP/NPP leaders have made a mockery of their much-touted commitment to good governance by shielding tainted ministers and officials. One can only hope that the government will not try to use Minister Jayakody’s indictment as a pretext to delay the parliamentary debate on the no-faith motion against him, scheduled for 10 April. It knows more than one way to shoe a horse, and has no sense of shame. It is in a dilemma over the no-faith motion against Jayakody. All MPs who defend him in Parliament will be lumped together with him. Having shielded him all along, they cannot now leave him to his fate.
In handling Minister Jayakody’s case, the CIABOC has acted faster than Iran’s hypersonic Fattah-2 missile, which travels at Mach 15. This is in sharp contrast to the manner in which it deals with Opposition politicians, their family members and cronies. They are arrested and made to languish in remand prison for months on end. The CIABOC continues to be an appendage of the government in power. The same is true of the police, who are also notorious for their partiality to the ruling party and selective efficiency. They have not arrested two ministers and a mayor involved in a forgery case. They swing into action and make arrests only when the suspects happen to be political rivals of the JVP-NPP government.
This is a country where even children are arrested and hauled up before court over minor offences. One may recall that three girls from a children’s home in Kalutara were arrested several weeks ago for breaking into a canteen and making off with some confectionery. A few years ago, a little girl was taken into custody for stealing a five-rupee coin, of all things, from a neighbour in Kalutara. The police recently arrested a person with four litres of petrol he had kept in a can for a weed-whacker to cut the grass in his garden ahead of a religious ceremony in memory of his parents. He was fined and jailed for 21 days. No such stringent action has been taken regarding the Opposition’s complaint that Minister Jayakody has caused staggering losses amounting to billions of rupees to the state through a corrupt coal procurement deal. It has been revealed that substandard coal imports have led to a huge drop in the coal-fired electricity generation at Norochcholai, and tens of thousands of litres of diesel have to be burnt daily to meet that power generation shortfall.
Legal and judicial processes have never been free from political interference in this country, and the current leaders who came to power, promising to depoliticise them are emulating previous regimes. Given this reality, one wonders whether the image of Justitia should be localised with a double-pocketed blouse over her Greco-Roman robe a la the two-pocket shirts of the ruling party leaders.
Most of those who voted for the JVP/NPP, helping bring about the 2024 regime change in the hope of creating a clean society based on equality and freedom must now be as disappointed and disillusioned as the animals that, inspired by the pigs, rebel and get rid of their owner in the Orwellian political fable, Animal Farm. Like the pigs, the incumbent rulers have made themselves ‘more equal than others’ while claiming to uphold the rule of law. They are testing the patience of the public. They are seen burning rubber in fuel-guzzling SUVs while urging the ordinary people to restrict travel and save energy.
The government is reportedly planning to launch a project to clean Beira Lake, which is stinking. A wag says it should do so expeditiously for the sake of its members rather than the public, for at this rate, their turn to swim in that polluted lake, as some SLPP politicians did in 2022, after being plunged there by angry mobs, may come sooner than expected. Politics is full of surprises.
