Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

08 June 2021

 

 

BUREAUCRATIC RED TAPE OR WAR CRIMES ACCUSATIONS?

 

‘Unnecessary bureaucratic red tape is being removed and procedures are being streamlined to ensure greater ease of doing business.’ – President Rajapaksa in relation to Colombo Port City - https://www.pmdnews.lk/president-invites-investors-world-over-to-join-on-the-transformational-journey-of-sri-lanka-the-region/

 

As per my discovery of the way Karma works – we write our own fate. That which we ‘write’ are ‘facts’. There is no karma if there are no facts produced by us. Karmic theory is the real constitution of the Universe.

Both my home nations - Sri Lanka as well as Australia have written Constitutions. They were written by elected leaders who as a political group claimed to identify with the whole nation. Most of us put ourselves through marriage law – religious or otherwise. If we are regulated by marriage laws and promises – we merge the energy of our elders with our own – to make the marriage successful. De facto marriages begin with the truth of the two sides and may or may not end up in official structure. So long as the two sides are honest with each other – the laws of their partnership become their constitution. Likewise, in the case of Nations that do not have a written constitution – the consolidated sharing of experiences – become their constitution.

Given that Sri Lanka has a written constitution, every president has the duty to operate in accord with that written constitution. This is not seen to be the case in relation to the 2009 battle against the Tamil Tigers who had their own de facto government.  Whatever they did became the basis of their constitution. Not so – the Tamil community that bound itself by Common Law. To the extent civilians died due to intimidation by Tamil Tigers, the Government with a written constitution is duty-bound to take responsibility for their sufferings.

This has not happened. Instead this government, headed by the then Defence Secretary, withdrew from global accountability towards Sinhala only accountability. This is a natural evolution of Sinhala only language law in 1956.

The Covid virus has exposed that this government – when it thinks it is ‘free’ would slip into that de facto mode in civil administration also. That is the only way this President seems comfortable with.

On that basis ‘Unnecessary bureaucratic red tape is being removed’ translates as ‘We are switching to de facto’ mode. Wikipedia presents bureaucracy as follows:

[The term bureaucracy may refer both to a body of non-elected governing officials and to an administrative policy-making group]

Hence without bureaucracy the Political leader is the king. That is what happened in the 2009 battle as well as the 1956 Parliament that passed the Sinhala only law. We now know that under the leadership of India, Tamils wrote their own provisions through the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution. This was a great political achievement by Tamil politicians who contributed to the political pathway. We owe India in a big way in this regard. Tamil political leaders wrote that constitution and they passed on only after the 13^th Amendment. One wonders whether they passed on so they did not have to witness the De facto leadership that Tamils were subjected to. They were thus protected by their own contribution to the lawful pathway.

The Sri Lankan Army also demoted itself to De facto status which meant that it did not have the blessings of law makers in common. To them and their leader – a good proportion of the lawful measures would seem like ‘Unnecessary bureaucratic red tape’. This was also the case with the LTTE. LTTE eliminated Political leaders who were seen by the LTTE to be ‘Unnecessary red bureaucrats’  but the government killed the higher Administration itself. This would include the structures by their own leaders in the past.

As we see – now – others including China and the USA are filling the gap. China through money power and America through global political power through Sinhalese who are American citizens by law. The Colombo Port City – written by this government carries the karma of avoiding the law. One cannot escape the karma that one wrote. But if we follow the law of our environment and remain within that environment – we would have the opportunity to invoke the blessings of our predecessors who did follow the law,  to offset our negative karma.