Public property, ours or theirs?

AS the dust settles on the hullabaloo surrounding the arrest of former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, we the public, are left wondering what all the fuss was about.

- By Ravi Perera

“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly” — Abraham Lincoln

“Something is rotten in the State of Denmark” — Shakespeare (Hamlet)

In the aftermath we learn that there is a species of corporeal property deemed “public property”, which you may offend only with dire consequences. Bump into a private car, it is just an accident to be taken care of by your insurance company. You knock into one of those much-misused Government-owned cars (State property), and you stand at the edge of an endless ordeal, surely you must account for your bad karma!

If the State (Police?) decides to charge the unfortunate driver for offending State property, apparently, he will be remanded indefinitely (until his trial commences, which in the Sri Lankan context is again in the hands of karma).

The punishment begins long before his trial, the only way for him to obtain bail before trial is to convince the judge that there are exceptional circumstances which warrant the granting of bail.

Since the offending driver will be an unexceptional person, he will not dream of claiming doubtful medical conditions, nor will hundreds of fine legal minds protest his arrest on the streets of Colombo. As to legal representation, he will be hard-pressed to obtain the services of even a novice lawyer.

Fundamental right to the presumption of innocence

We do not have the facts and figures on the time duration a suspect remains in remand until his trial in such cases, or the percentage of these cases that end up in a conviction. Going by the record of other cases, these statistics will not be a credit to our legal systems.

To the layman this indefinite remanding of an accused, merely because a bureaucrat or a policeman says there is an offence, goes against our fundamental right to the presumption of innocence, a vital hypothesis in our social contract with the State.