Season of arrests

Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya told Parliament yesterday that 63 individuals, including politicians, their family members and state officials, had been arrested for bribery and corruption during the last six months or so. Her statement coincided with the news that Shasheendra Rajapaksa, had been arrested by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC). His arrest came as no surprise; it had been in the air for months.

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Prime Minister Amarasuriya took great pains to have Parliament and the public believe that the CIABOC was independent and the government could not influence it. Her preemptive defence was as subtle as a brick through a window; it reminded us of a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet—‘“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

All those who abused power to amass wealth and perpetrate various crimes, including the physical elimination of some of their political rivals, during previous governments, must be made to face the full force of the law. However, if these characters succeed in making the ongoing probes and legal action against them out to be a political witch-hunt, the NPP government’s efforts to have them thrown behind bars and relegated to the political dustbin may come a cropper. One may recall that there were many arrests during the Yahapalana government (2015-2019), which also made its political opponents languish in remand prison for months. But such action did not yield the desired results; most of the hurriedly filed cases collapsed, and the villains became heroes; the defeated rulers made a stunning comeback in 2018.