{"id":101556,"date":"2020-04-25T17:33:26","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T00:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=101556"},"modified":"2020-04-25T17:33:26","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T00:33:26","slug":"reckless-sliding-tackles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/04\/25\/reckless-sliding-tackles\/","title":{"rendered":"Reckless sliding tackles"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Three current unavoidable circumstances that only anti-national\nforces could exploit to stymie the government\u2019s progress in its anti-Covid-19\ndrive thereby contributing to general oppositional efforts to destabilize the\nSri Lankan state are   (1) the recent announcement of a new date for the\nnext parliamentary elections by the Election Commission, (2) the mobilization\nof the health and national security departments for the containment of the\nspread of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 or Covid-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka, and\n(3) the arrest by the CID of a lawyer in the course of investigations into the\nIslamic terrorist bombings of April 21 last year (2019). These \u2018issues\u2019 have\ncreated an opportunity for the opposition to resort to the controversial\nsliding tackle move against the government, so to speak. (This is a personal\nthought for what it is worth. Open to criticism)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Election Commission has declared June 20 as the new polls\ndate. Earlier the opposition groups and individuals made an unnecessary ruckus\nraising unfair allegations that the government was anxious to hold elections in\nspite of the operation being deadly to the public because of the epidemic\nsituation. Groups loyal to the government naturally favour as early an election\nas possible, but they are unlikely to subject people to lethal health hazards\nin achieving that end. The preference of the opposition elements, on the other\nhand, seems to be for cancelling the elections altogether. The still menacing\nCovid-19 situation, though so far the government has managed it with\nappreciable success, is the second issue that is being exploited by the\nelection-phobic opposition to attack the government.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recent  arrest of a lawyer named Hejaz Hizbullah by the\nCID has also stirred up adverse commentary in some quarters. The online Colombo\nTelegraph (April 19, 2020) ran an article by Chamika Madiwake under the title\n\u2018CID Abuses Covid-19 Surveillance To Detain Top Lawyer: Habeas Corpus Petition\nReveals Terrifying Details\u2019 (sic). Any reader looking for these so-called\n\u2018terrifying details\u2019 in the article will be disappointed. There is nothing to\nshow that the CID officers resorted to any illegal methods to detain him. No\nless a person than His Eminence Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith had repeatedly\nexpressed his dissatisfaction with the way investigations were conducted under\nthe Ranil-Sirisena government into the April 21 terror attacks (and this\nfeeling was universally shared by ordinary people). Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, in his\nelection manifesto \u2018Vision GR\u2019 as presidential candidate, pledged to\nre-investigate the bombings and bring to book the culprits behind the heinous\ncrime irrespective of their status in society. The first anniversary of the\nmultiple suicide terror bombings  in three Catholic churches and three\n5-star hotels, has just passed; investigations have been speeded up with three\nmore teams deployed to assist them. The Cardinal sounds confident that under president\nGotabaya Rajapaksa the needful will be done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The arrest of the lawyer was no doubt a part of the investigative\nprocess; there cannot be any political interference in the matter. This lawyer\n(who is not so \u2018top\u2019 as Chamika M pretends) wouldn\u2019t have been taken into\ncustody unless there was enough information to justify his detention. After\nall, as a lawyer, he was allegedly legal consultant to Pettah trader in spices\nMohamed Yusuf Mohamed Ibrahim, and the latter\u2019s two sons blew themselves up in\ntwo 5-star hotels in Colombo killing some local and foreign patrons. Hejaz\nHizbullah\u2019s arrest was not an arbitrary one contrary to what the obviously ill\ninformed or misinformed Chamika M alleges. He refers to a Jaffna lawyer in\nsupport of his view of the arrest of Hejaz Hizbullah: \u2018Jaffna lawyer and\nacademic K. Guruparan however called the arrest of Hizbullah and the way it\ncame about atrocious\u201d\u2019. How much this quote helps Chamika M establish his case\nis not difficult to decide (that is, little). Chamika M must have been born\nyesterday. He appears to be completely unaware or deliberately forgetful of how\nthe so-called Financial Crimes Investigations Division (FCID), illegally\ninstituted according as some legal experts have been pointing out, was\noperating under the arbitrary direction of the then prime minister Ranil\nWickremasinghe, whose government squandered almost all of its time on keeping\npolitical opponents at bay mostly through false litigation. People are\nconfident that no such politicization of the law enforcement agencies will take\nplace under president Gotabaya. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chamika M expresses scepticism about Hejaz Hizbullah getting\njustice. He concludes his potentially libellous article with this incredibly\nnasty comment: QUOTE \u2018The Court of Appeal is currently led by Abdul Hameed\nDileep Nawaz, a notoriously corrupt judge, and staunch supporter of President\nGotabaya Rajapaksa\u2019. END OF QUOTE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Note on the title for readers not familiar with the football term\nused in it: A sliding tackle, also called a slide tackle, is a usually\ncontroversial move in the game of football. When this tackle move is executed,\na player slides along the ground with their leg extended to push the ball so\nthe opposing player is prevented from doing what they want to do with it.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postscript:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above was completed on April 23. The factual situation\nregarding the lawyer\u2019s arrest was explained to the media at a news briefing by\nPolice spokesman Attorney-at-law SP Jaliya Senaratne as reported in The Island\nnewspaper the next day (April 24): According to the Police spokesman there was\nirrefutable evidence to link Attorney-at-Law, Hejaaz Hisbullah, who had been\nrecently taken into custody by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), in\nconnection with the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings\u2026\u2026. SP Jaliya Senaratne\ndenied accusations the arrest had been made without sufficient evidence\u201d. The\narrest was made a week before the first anniversary of the Easter Sunday\ncarnage. The news report also mentioned the fact that the suspect\u2019s father\nNaina Hizbullah had recently filed a habeas corpus application against Hejaz\nHizbullah\u2019s arrest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala Three current unavoidable circumstances that only anti-national forces could exploit to stymie the government\u2019s progress in its anti-Covid-19 drive thereby contributing to general oppositional efforts to destabilize the Sri Lankan state are   (1) the recent announcement of a new date for the next parliamentary elections by the Election Commission, (2) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}