{"id":53965,"date":"2016-04-21T14:29:09","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T21:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=53965"},"modified":"2016-04-21T14:29:09","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T21:29:09","slug":"appointment-of-igp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/04\/21\/appointment-of-igp\/","title":{"rendered":"Appointment of IGP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retired Police Officer\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

April 20, 2016, 8:44 pm<\/span><\/p>\n

The recent decision to appoint an officer of the Police Force to fill the vacancy created by Mr. N.K.Illangakoon when he retired on April 11th has drawn much flak from various quarters.<\/p>\n

The selection of Senior Deputy Inspector General, Mr. Pujitha Jayasundera, to be the next Inspector General of Police is being criticized by some whilst others seem to support it.<\/p>\n

My endeavour is not to counter their arguments nor to support a particular line of thinking, but to correct a mistake in a TV programme yesterday morning. On several occasions, the male telecaster reading the headlines, referring to the previously adopted procedures in appointing the IGP as erratic, claimed that only now, under the 19th Amendment, the Head of State was prevented from appointing a person of his or her choice, disregarding seniority etc.,<\/p>\n

\"article_image\"<\/p>\n

Insofar as we are aware, the system introduced and that prevailed till the late S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike took over as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), was to have the next most Senior Officer appointed as the Inspector General of Police, when a vacancy occurred.<\/p>\n

During that time, late Osmund de Silva was Inspector General of Police. He had been requested by Mr. Bandaranaike to perform a duty which the former believed was not lawful. According to Sec. 56 of the Police Ordinance, a Police Officer is duty bound to carry out only lawful orders issued by a competent authority. Mr. de Silva had refused to accede to the request. As a result, he had been asked to step down and Mr. M.W.F.Abeykoon was brought in from outside the Force and installed as Inspector General of Police. What happened? When Mr. Abeykoon was playing bridge at the Orient Club, his subordinates were planning a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat!<\/p>\n

Once again, the procedure that existed was restored and continued until Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga became the Executive President of Sri Lanka. Instead of appointing the next most senior Officer as the Inspector General of Police, she preferred to appoint late B.L.V. de S. Kodituwakku, who was a confidante of her mother\u2019s, the late Sirima Bandaranaike, as the Inspector General of Police. Unlike the earlier occasion, disaster did not strike because he was from within the Force.<\/p>\n

Coming back to the erratic situation the telecaster chose to repeatedly announce, what he thought was correct, it would have given a wrong impression to the public who watched the program.<\/p>\n

Further, may I also remind the television channel concerned that in this instance, which he repeatedly said was correct; it is not the most senior who had been selected but the second most senior!<\/p>\n

Retired Police Officer<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retired Police Officer\u00a0Courtesy The Island April 20, 2016, 8:44 pm The recent decision to appoint an officer of the Police Force to fill the vacancy created by Mr. N.K.Illangakoon when he retired on April 11th has drawn much flak from various quarters. The selection of Senior Deputy Inspector General, Mr. Pujitha Jayasundera, to be the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53965","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=53965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}