(MENAFN- Colombo Gazette) By N Sathiya Moorthy
If the Government is serious about intelligence reports on 'groups working to create a crisis' in September, rather than letting Minister of State for Defence, Premitha Bandara Tennakoon, to share it through the media, President Ranil Wickremesinghe should have taken the nation into confidence personally – either through a special mention in Parliament, or through a national address, or both. Again personally, he should also share greater details with political party and civil society leaders, and expect them to honour the secrets as equally honourable citizens of the country.
What is chilling about Minister Tennakoon's disclosure at the news conference is what he had shared with newsmen, who were called in, to the President's Media Centre (PMC), specifically for the purpose.“Members of these groups,” he said,“received special training on how to confront the Army and the Police during a protest held at a prominent hotel near the Hunnas Giri waterfall in the Elkaduwa area last week.”
Though the minister did not name the hotel, the added specifics about the location may be a clear give-away for the locals especially, and many other people across the country who may have been regulars at the waterfall. But the same cannot be said about the people who were trained and more so the people who trained them, their social identity and political ideology.
The minister cited intelligence reports to declare that 'practical and theoretical training was conducted to teach protesters on how to respond to the Army and Police during demonstrations, including handling tear-gas and water-cannon'. Implied is the possibility of their ability to organise massive protests of the kind that has already crossed your mind's eyes, even if not of the Aragalaya proportions.
New normal
Thank God, there is no mention of any weapons-training in the minister's briefing, unless there are other reports of the kind on such training being imparted elsewhere in the country. If not, the intelligence agencies should be – and could be – already at seeking to uncover a greater conspiracy to destabilize the nation, to ensure that there is no return to normalcy, even if of the short-term, 'new normal' variety, as experienced over the past few months.
Minister Tennakoon assured the nation that intelligence units were continuously monitoring the activities of these groups. Despite there have been occasional indications that intelligence inputs available to the State had weakened and posed problems to the country's national security, say, during last year's Aragalaya protests, the minister asserted that the 'intelligence sector remains solid'.
The reference of course flows from an all-but-forgotten report of a three-member committee of military veterans after reports appeared about Chief of Staff (CoS) and war-decorated Army General, Shavendra Silva, not taking orders from then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was also the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Under the Constitution, Gota was also his own Defence Minister.
What more, as CDS, Gen Silva had reportedly ignored calls to order from then Defence Secretary, another war-winner, Gen Kamal Gunaratne, who was/is also the National Security Advisor (NSA). Sure enough, the Government has since acted on the three-member committee report, if only to ensure that there is not a repeat.
Of course, it could be argued (with or without evidence) that President Gota had wanted the security forces to put down what otherwise many saw – and also wanted to see – as a 'relatively peaceful and unprecedented protests'. To be fair, the mayhem that a section of the protestors created on a single evening, or coordinated arson in the homes and offices of over 80 ruling party politicians from the President and Prime Minister downwards, too, had no parallel.
If there was anything heartening about it all, it was over Gota quitting, not owing to withdrawal of support by a majority of his parliamentarians after the arsenic attack on their homes. The arson attacks all wee 'well plotted' and 'equally coordinated'.
One after another they occurred in a matter of one or two hours, at places far removed from one another, across the south and west of the country, sparing only the Tamil North and mixed-community East, so to say. Whatever be their other short-comings, crimes and worse, credit should go to the politicos, not one of them budged after being threatened with those arson attacks, and one of them being already killed along with his police security personnel.
If only the ruling party MPs especially had given in to the fear that was sought to be implanted into each one of them, then, the Aragalaya protests would have, or could have, ended differently. Then again, Gota would have had little political choice, though under the Constitution, he could still have been the boss. However, what could have followed is nto what it was since.
Import, importance
MoS Tennkoon was not alone in making those claims. Even a few days before him, Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, had said as much at a news briefing, again at the President's Media Centre.“Their objective is to contrive a plan to destabilise all sectors of the country through strikes in September. The first step in destabilising the country and reigniting a major crisis is to target the sensitive healthcare sector,” he is reported to have alleged.
The irony of the current political situation and social dismay is such that no one has sought any details or explanations from the Government even days after the two ministers had successively drawn the nation's attention to what they say is in store. Is the nation in disbelief per se, or does it not trust the Establishment, or does it not trust just this Government?
Hence, there is thus a need for the Government to draw the nation's attention what is of grave import and of greater importance, in these upcoming weeks and months towards relative normalcy, especially on the economic front. That is also when the nation would be slipping into an election-mode.
After all, the presidential polls are due by the third quarter of next year, followed by parliamentary elections, only months down the line. In context, no one is talking about the long-pending Provincial Council polls or the court-ordered local government elections.
Hence, the suggestion also for President Wickremesinghe to take the nation into confidence on the information at the Government's hand – or, however much that the authorities can share with the populace, given the multiple sensitivities involved, as it is all about the Holy Grail of 'national security' and all that.
Without the President speaking out, and not in a casual and passing manner, for the Government to revisit the past and complain that they had the information, they had cautioned the nation, but none cared, would just be not on, if and when it happened. Full-stop.
Preventive action
If the Government has this much of intelligence inputs on plot(s) to subvert the established processes and destabilise the nation, sure enough they would also have had leads on the perpetrators. No one is going to complain if the Government took them all into 'preventive custody' and produce them before open courts – or, even closed courts, but of a civilian variety – and establish what all that could be proved with evidence. Apart from obtaining penalty for wrong-doers, such a course could also deter others who might have been talked into or indoctrinated to a lesser degree.
The question then would be if the Government could fall back on the dreaded and much-despised Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). If the Government is confident that it could prove to the satisfaction of a court that the conspiracy and training had elements of 'national security' to them, then definitely, it could go ahead.
Yet, what is there to protect or cover-up if the Government's intention is to expose the guilty and save the nation? After PTA, or its pending new avatar gives draconian powers to the security powers, not only in interrogating individuals but also in holding them in long years of custody without trial. That should be and can be done away with.
Then there is a 'larger plot'. At the end of the Aragalaya protests, some political party leaders spoke about a 'larger conspiracy' involving some foreign missions and their diplomats, based in Colombo. This has been a persistent theme at the turn of every Government that have invariably lost power in democratic elections.
Of course, Gota's exit was an exemption. There, a so-called people's movement, on the lines of 'Arab Spring' and 'Orange Revolution' elsewhere took over. Some social media posts were also harsh, hard and dangerously cruel, and made pointed references to the end of Muammar Gaddafi's long regime in Libya.
(The writer is a policy analyst & political commentator, based in Chennai, India. Email: )