This being the ‘election season’, there are promises galore, laid at the feet of prospective voters. That is only to be expected. Promises made during election time are similar to New Year resolutions: many are made, but they are rarely honoured.
Nevertheless, promises made at election campaigns should be within the realms of reality and it should be possible to implement them; otherwise, they constitute an insult to the intelligence of the voters.
This is the challenge which we must pose to the presidential candidate of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and former Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa who daringly promised during his election campaign that he would release “war heroes who have been wrongly imprisoned” by the morning of November 17, the day after the election.
This pledge is eerily similar to the promise made by then presidential candidate Maithripala Sirisena during the 2015 presidential election that he will “close the airport at midnight on January 8” to prevent corrupt politicians of the previous regime fleeing the country. The airport was never closed and the less said about this promise, the better!
Rajapaksa’s promise raises many issues. These are queries about Rajapaksa’s competence and judgment, or really, the lack of it, and begs the question as to what Rajapaksa’s definition of a ‘war hero’ is.
In most peoples’ minds, a war hero is an individual who has performed an act of heroism or valour in a theatre of conflict. An individual who wears the uniform of the armed forces or Police does not automatically qualify to become a ‘war hero’, particularly if they have committed an offence that is illegal or criminal in nature. On the contrary, they should never be hailed as ‘war heroes’.
Presuming that Rajapaksa was an avid follower of current events in the country over the past four and a half years, he must surely know that if any so-called ‘war heroes’ have been imprisoned, that has been done after a rigorous judicial process at which the accused individuals would have the presumption to innocence until proven guilty. They would have also had the right to appeal their decisions in the relevant higher courts.
Rajapaksa is theoretically correct when he says that he can release these so-called ‘war heroes’. If elected President of the country, he will have the power to pardon offenders. Rajapaksa’s brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, famously pardoned the wife of a minister convicted of a double murder. President Sirisena also pardoned Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara thera who was convicted of contempt of court.
However, how would Rajapaksa free all ‘war heroes’ by the morning of November 17? Will he assume that any member of the armed forces who is in prison is a ‘war hero’ and pardon them forthwith?
Would that not constitute a slap in the face of the judiciary which would have undertaken a stringent process to examine the merits of the cases against each individual who is imprisoned and arrived at a conclusion according to the laws of the land?
Not that such a course of action would surprise us. We know that the Rajapaksas are past masters at ignoring or insulting the judiciary and what it stands for. That is what then President Mahinda Rajapaksa did with Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, impeaching her in a kangaroo court constituted in Parliament and appointing a puppet instead to that august office, tarnishing its image.
As for war heroes, the Rajapaksas have an impressive record on this too. No one will disagree that former Army Commander and now Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka is a war hero. He is a man who, having been almost fatally injured in a suicide bomb attack, literally carried his intestine with him to the hospital and resolved to fight the war to a finish - which he did, quite successfully.
After hailing him as the ‘greatest Army Commander in the world’ didn’t the Rajapaksas treat him really well, getting his junior officers to physically drag him away after the 2010 presidential election, court-martialling him on trumped up charges by-passing the usual judicial processes, stripping him of his rank and his pension and imprisoning him? And, these are the same Rajapaksas who are now lamenting that ‘war heroes’ are in jail and promising to release them overnight!
If elected, it also quite possible that Gotabaya Rajapaksa could walk into a prison, open its doors and let all those ‘war heroes’ out, just a few hours after taking oaths. After all, didn’t brother Mahinda sign some certificates for dual citizenship, just a few days after taking oaths because that was more of a priority than appointing his Cabinet of Ministers?
This is why candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s promise to free ‘war heroes’ on the morning of November 17 is important. It is an inadvertent indication that old habits die hard: if elected, Rajapaksa will have no qualms about ignoring judicial process, so he could do what he wants to do - and no one shall stand in the way. That is the moral of this story.