{"id":56901,"date":"2016-07-24T12:37:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T19:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=56901"},"modified":"2016-07-24T12:37:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-24T19:37:07","slug":"walls-of-secrecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/07\/24\/walls-of-secrecy\/","title":{"rendered":"Walls of secrecy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
\u00a0July 23, 2016, 9:50 am<\/span><\/div>\n

Many an eyebrow has been raised by a government decision to exempt the proposed Office of Missing Persons (OMP) from the provisions of the Right to Information Act (RIA). It can refuse to provide information even to the apex court, we are told.<\/p>\n

The UN is in the forefront of a global campaign to promote good governance, of which transparency is an integral part. But, it itself does not care two hoots about transparency if secrecy is required to further the interests of the western bloc, which keeps UN bigwigs under its thumb. One may recall that a \u2018panel of experts\u2019, cobbled together by UNSG Ban Ki-moon to probe the alleged accountability issues during the closing stage of the Vanni war, chose to base their damning report on information purportedly provided by some persons whose identities won\u2019t be divulged for 20 years. There is no way anyone can verify the information they have furnished. It may be that all of those who testified hiding behind a cloak of anonymity are LTTE sympathisers or they do not even exist. By the time the stipulated 20-year period comes to an end neither the UN experts nor most of us will be among the living! The \u2018findings\u2019 of that document, which has come to be dubbed the \u2018Darusman report\u2019, are the basis of the UNHRC resolution for setting up a hybrid mechanism here to probe alleged war crimes. This is a textbook case of circular logic.<\/p>\n

The proposed OMP goes beyond the Darusman report where lack of transparency is concerned. For, it is free to suppress information forever. Some trade unions have dubbed the proposed Customs Ordinance a hotchpotch of borrowings from other countries. It looks as if the architects of the proposed OMP had learnt from North Korea, where transparency is concerned.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, situations where the identity of a person must not be revealed. The law prevents\u2014and rightly so\u2014the victims of rape being named. But, why on earth there have to be laws banning the identification of those who are found after being reported missing? One may wonder whether this measure is aimed at keeping the existence of \u2018missing\u2019 terrorists under wraps in case they are traced?<\/p>\n

The on-going debate over the OMP reminds us of a story about an arms trader in times of yore. Plying his trade in a crowded market place he boasted that the shields and spears he produced were the best. Nothing could penetrate his shields and his spears were capable of piercing anything, he bragged. A small boy, wearing a puzzled look, asked him innocently what would happen if someone threw one of his spears at one of his shields. The government finds itself in an embarrassing position like the aforesaid trader. What would be the outcome of the provisions of the RIA and the OMP clashing?<\/p>\n

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has called upon parliamentarians not to vote for the OMP. His position is not devoid of partisan politics, but his views need to be heeded. It is being claimed in the Opposition circles that the OMP won\u2019t be answerable even to Parliament, which exercises people\u2019s sovereignty. Creating an institution capable of placing itself above the legislative and judicial arms of government is a dangerous experiment which may even mark Sri Lanka\u2019s Frankenstein moment, so to speak.<\/p>\n

Some of the champions of transparency this newspaper has contacted for comment on the transparency issues as regards the OMP are all at sea. What we have heard from them is mere gobbledygook. It is time they sat up, took notice of the situation and did something.<\/p>\n

The government has bungled all the way. It presented a budget which became a farce with amendments outweighing the original content. It plunged feet first into co-sponsoring a resolution in Geneva, undertaking to allow the participation of foreign judges, prosecutors et al in a war crimes probe mechanism to be set up here. Now, it is opposing what it undertook to do! Then, it jacked up VAT and NBT according to its whims and fancies. Having suffered a sobering knock at the hands of the Supreme Court, it does not know whether it is coming or going. The proposed OMP may be the latest addition to its string of blunders as it were. Hence, the pressing need for avoiding undue haste in seeking parliamentary approval for it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island \u00a0July 23, 2016, 9:50 am Many an eyebrow has been raised by a government decision to exempt the proposed Office of Missing Persons (OMP) from the provisions of the Right to Information Act (RIA). It can refuse to provide information even to the apex court, we are told. The UN is in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-security","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56901","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=56901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}