Editorial Courtesy The Island

April 21, 2016, 8:52 pm

The police super star contest, as it were, is thankfully over. It was preceded by weeks of intense lobbying and campaigning. Pujith Jayasundara has emerged the winner. Beaming from ear to ear he received his letter of appointment from President Maithripala Sirisena on Wednesday. It was no mean achievement for a cop. Why he is so tickled pink is understandable; the Constitutional Council has considered him better suited for the post than even his senior colleague cum contender who has been handpicked by two successive presidents including the incumbent one to ensure their security!

The new IGP will now spend a few weeks paying courtesy calls and attending ceremonies in keeping with tradition. The sobering reality will begin to kick in thereafter. Uneasy lies the head that wears the IGP’s cap!

We know there are people who, troubled by the ever increasing crime rate, want the new IGP, from the get-go, to take on the netherworld of crime. Sexual violence against women and children, armed robberies and murder have come to plague the country. However, it is not fair for anyone to expect the new police chief to bring down the high incidence of crime forthwith. Rome wasn’t built in a day, was it?

One should be reasonable! The bar must not be raised unreasonably high for the new IGP at this juncture. Instead, let him be called upon to perform a simple task and prove his mettle in his new capacity. No, we are not asking him to investigate and find out how all CCTV cameras in Rajagiriya mysteriously failed to record a hit-and-run accident allegedly involving a minster in that area a few weeks ago. It is not fair for us to ask the new IGP to probe that incident thoroughly and jeopardise, in the process, the interests of the minister cum Constitutional Council member concerned who is said to have voted for him. The challenge we have in mind for him is much easier than that.

The new IGP must be aware that in the Gampaha District there is a place called Wattala. A few weeks ago, someone destroyed a jogging track in that area by using backhoes. The incident took place only a stone’s throw from a police station.

The present government is all out to punish those who have caused losses to the state coffers. But, unfortunately, those who destroyed the walkway which was a public asset under the nose of the police have gone scot free.

Will IGP Jayasundara prove his mettle by arresting the destroyer/s of that walking track and hauling them up before courts? That is no Herculean task, we reckon. Will he act fast? Tick-tock, tick-tock …

Curiouser, curiouser!

An LTTE cadre arrested a few weeks ago for keeping a suicide jacket, mines, TNT explosives and ammunition in Chavakachcheri is being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), the government has said, as we reported yesterday. In answer to a query posed by this newspaper, at a media briefing attended by Defence Secretary Karunasena Hettiarachchi, Senior DIG Nandana Munasinghe confirmed on Wednesday that the suspect concerned was being detained under the PTA.

One is intrigued! No sooner had the Chava explosive cache been detected than the government claimed it posed no threat to national security. Defence Secretary Hettiarachchi himself sought to downplay the gravity of the situation. Pro-government defence experts claimed the LTTE no longer posed any threat to the lives of VVIPs. If so, the question is why the suspect is being held under the PTA which government allies, both local and foreign, have condemned as draconian?