The Island Editorial

When sailors buoy coffers

28 March 2017

 

The government, caught in a mega debt crisis, is desperate for funds and apparently doesn’t care where they come from. Time was when the traffic police considered it their bounden duty to make roads safe by preventing accidents. They did everything in their power to discourage reckless driving and jaywalking. But, today, they seem to think their raison d’etre is to raise funds for the state coffers by way of fines instead of preventing road mishaps. It looks as if they waited patiently behind wayside trees etc for traffic offences to be committed so that the culprits could be fined.

Now, the Navy brags that it has helped the government rake in as much as Rs. 3 bn by facilitating the On-Board Security Teams (OBST) operations for the last one and a half years. Acting on a presidential directive, consequent upon the Avant Garde floating armoury controversy, it undertook to receive, store and issue weapons, ammunition and equipment from local and foreign OBST teams, tasked with protecting merchant ships against Somali pirates.

The government ought to reveal how much the state has lost owing to the cancellation of UN-sanctioned anti-piracy operations, carried out by a group of ex-military personnel under the previous government. Alleging that Avant Garde and the state-owned security firm, Rakna Arakshaka Lanka, had run afoul of the law, the incumbent administration instituted legal action against them as well as some heavyweights of the Rajapaksa government connected thereto before handing over the OBST operations to the Navy.

If it can be proved that there have been any transgressions on the part of Avant Garde, Rakna Arakshaka Lanka and the politicians as well as public officials associated with them, deterrent punishment is called for against them. But, it boggles one’s mind why the former Sri Lankan military personnel should ever be prevented from making use of their expertise to ensure the safety of commercial vessels, threatened by pirates, and bring in the much-needed foreign exchange in the process.

The Somali pirates have, through the recent hostage drama, proved that their striking capability is far from diminished though they have been lying low. Sri Lankan military personnel, who decimated the LTTE’s naval arm and are now in retirement, will be able to help remove the scourge of Somali piracy; their support should be enlisted under proper state supervision.

Some western nations have made no bones about their opposition to the involvement of Sri Lankan armed forces in what they describe as commercial activity. The yahapalana government has put the kibosh on some of the army-run shops in the former war zone as a matter of policy under international pressure.

Ideally, armed forces or police must not be allowed to get involved in business activity lest their members should develop a taste for dosh and succumb to its corrupting influence. But, the question is why the aforesaid nations have not raised any objections to the Sri Lanka Navy facilitating the lucrative OBST operations. They have, while making a hue and cry about accountability issues, secured Sri Lanka’s backing for extraordinary renditions, which, in plain English, mean abductions on foreign soil and transferring the captives to torture camps.

Rewards for the Sri Lanka Navy’s cooperation in helping tackle the problem of Australia-bound illegal immigrants have come in the form of two naval vessels from down under. The Australian coastguard takes into custody the economic refugees who embark on perilous voyages from here and hand them over to the Sri Lanka navy for onward action. This, Australia does while accusing the Sri Lankan armed forces of having committed war crimes and denying their officers visas!

The present government’s propensity for public-private partnerships even in respect of state ventures which are either profitable or can be turned around with little effort, is only too well known. It has called for private sector participation in the domestic air services currently provided by the Sri Lanka Air Force. But, it has left the OBST project entirely to the Navy. Is it because the yahapalana leaders act out of expediency, not principle?