An Open Letter to the Minister of Justice & National Integration
“History does not remember governments for the statements they issue after a tragedy. It remembers whether they ensured the tragedy was never repeated.”
Hon. Harshana Nanayakkara, M.P.,
Permit me to begin by disappointing those who may already be sharpening their political knives.
This E-paper is not writing to demand your resignation. Indeed, if ministerial resignations alone solved Sri Lanka’s problems, ours would by now rank amongst the best- governed countries on earth. We have changed ministers with admirable regularity over the decades; regrettably, our institutions have proved rather less enthusiastic about changing with them. Replacing the name on the office door has seldom repaired the leaking roof above it.
That, Minister, is why Negombo is bigger than Negombo.
Before going any further, fairness requires that something be acknowledged. Following the tragic events at Negombo Prison, you stood before Parliament and accepted ministerial responsibility. Whether one agrees with every word you spoke is almost beside the point. In Sri Lankan politics, accepting responsibility has become sufficiently uncommon that one was briefly tempted to check whether Parliament had accidentally relocated to Copenhagen for the afternoon. Responsibility, in our political culture, has developed an unfortunate habit of travelling first class and always with a return ticket to somebody else’s desk.
Accepting responsibility, however, is only the beginning. The country will ultimately judge this Government not by the sincerity of its condolences nor by the solemnity of its parliamentary statements, but by what it quietly reforms once the television cameras have moved elsewhere and public attention has inevitably shifted to tomorrow’s crisis. May I respectfully ask whether Negombo is really the problem – or merely the latest symptom of something far deeper?
Twenty-six lives have now been lost. Prison officers entrusted with protecting the Republic died while performing their duty. Inmates also died while under the direct custody and protection of the State.
More than one hundred people were injured, hundreds of prisoners transferred and, for several disturbing hours, the State itself appeared to lose effective control inside one of its own institutions. Those facts alone should concern every Sri Lankan irrespective of political persuasion, because when the State loses control within its own walls, confidence inevitably begins to weaken beyond those walls as well.
Negombo now joins an unhappy roll call that already includes Welikada and Mahara. Different governments. Different ministers. Different Commissioners-General of Prisons.
Yet remarkably similar questions continue to present themselves with almost embarrassing punctuality. Why do our prisons remain dangerously overcrowded? Why do organised criminal networks continue to exercise influence behind prison walls?
Why do intelligence failures seem to become visible only after blood has already been spilled?
Above all, why do we repeatedly discuss prison reform only after another tragedy reminds us that the previous promises quietly disappeared somewhere between Cabinet memoranda, official committees and filing cabinets?
Sri Lanka has become remarkably efficient at appointing commissions after disasters.
We have become somewhat less efficient at preventing the disasters that require those commissions in the first place. One sometimes wonders whether there is already a standard operating procedure for announcing an inquiry, complete with prepared templates and carefully rehearsed expressions of deep concern. If only there existed an equally well-thumbed manual entitled
How Not to Need Another One.
Fairness also demands that we make another point with equal clarity. The crisis inside Sri Lanka’s prisons did not begin with your Government.
Nor did it begin with the administration immediately before yours. It has been inherited, neglected, studied, postponed and inherited once again by governments of every political persuasion. Each promised reform.
Each expressed concern. Each established committees. Yet concern, however sincerely expressed, has proved singularly ineffective at reducing overcrowding, modernising ageing prisons, dismantling organised criminal networks or shortening the intolerable delays that leave thousands of remand prisoners waiting years for justice.
Perhaps that explains why the electorate voted as it did.
There is a fashionable tendency among political commentators to portray the last General Election as evidence of a profound ideological awakening. I suspect the explanation is considerably simpler. The overwhelming majority of Sri Lankans did not suddenly become students of political philosophy.
They simply reached the point where they had grown weary of a style of governance that had become synonymous with nepotism, corruption, waste, entitlement and the gradual erosion of public confidence in State institutions. They were not necessarily embracing one political doctrine so much as rejecting a way of governing that they believed had failed them.
History, however, deserves fairness too. The defeat of the LTTE brought an end to one of the darkest and most painful chapters this nation has endured.
It ended decades of ruthless terrorism and gave Sri Lankans of every community the opportunity to rebuild their lives in peace. Those responsible for that achievement earned their place in history.
History, however, cannot govern the present.
Military victory, however significant, cannot become a perpetual exemption from civilian accountability.
Governments are elected not merely to celebrate yesterday’s achievements but to solve today’s problems. The public did not vote simply to exchange one collection of political portraits for another, nor merely to replace familiar slogans with newer ones.
It voted because it wanted institutions that functioned differently, public money treated with greater respect, appointments made on merit rather than proximity, and accountability that was measured by action rather than aspiration.
That, Minister, is why Negombo matters. Not because prison riots are unprecedented.
Sadly, they are not.
Not because governments occasionally fail. Every government does.
Negombo matters because it asks a profoundly uncomfortable question that reaches well beyond the prison walls of one institution.
If the State struggles to maintain authority within one of its own institutions, how confidently can it ask citizens or indeed those considering investing their capital in Sri Lanka to believe that every other institution is functioning as it should?
That is no longer simply a prison question. It is a question about the Republic itself.
