Feature

Securing a pardon for SB Dissanayake

BY MARK Anthony

WHILE the political talk has been largely about the post tsunami mechanism or "joint mechanism" as it's better known, a side show cropping up during the past week was the travails of SB Dissanayake, one time General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and presently the Secretary of the National Organizing Committee of the United National Party (UNP), though more lately an inmate of the paying wards of the National Hospital in Colombo where the ruling elites are generally granted the privilege of serving their custodial sentences. His being a two year sentence of rigorous imprisonment for contempt of Court.

Securing SB's release has obviously been on the agenda of some sections of the UNP, given the parades, web sites, posters, wall graffiti and other such demonstrations of the public will that the UNP has been able to muster. All this of course does not seem to have had much impact either on SB's plight or on public opinion, but the issues surrounding SB are interesting.

Firstly SB was the man to hate for the UNP and their allied media men. He was termed an election rigger and much worse by the UNP and the target of much of their hate. Especially after his meteoric rise to the post of General Secretary of the SLFP.

However after SB's cross over to the UNP and initial ensconcing as an insider in that Party Leader's inner sanctum, all criticisms of SB, his politics and electioneering style ceased.

There was never a protest or peep regarding the conduct of elections in Hanguranketha, his pocket barrow which he rules with an iron fist, mostly without the velvet glove.

The alternative policy boys and CMEV types who loved to posture that Hanguranketha elections were a cross between JR's fraudulent referendum and the Mahara by election were all silent with his cross over.

Suddenly SB was the darling of the UNP establishment. Rather like a Premadasa, SB was thought as one who would spearhead a UNP renaissance among the rural poor and working class. Such thought was not to be.

The past week saw the strange sight of MP and former Minister Milinda Moragoda meeting with President Kumaratunga to secure SB's release. The day after his long jaw with the President, MP Moragoda was his usual affable self as a guest at the President's lunch in honour of visiting former US President Bill Clinton.

Moragoda a proponent of a new political culture emphasizing bipartisanship as his recent media ads demonstrate has moreover in his relatively short parliamentary career demonstrated his own personal commitment to the same by practising the politics of accommodation during the period of the UNP cohabitation government, during which time he was a strong advocate and practitioner of cohabitation politics, a policy which seems significantly endorsed by the Colombo District electorate, as opposed to say Ravi Karunanayake's in your face attitude with all whom he politically disagrees with.

However SB's lot is a rather hard one at present. Since the Court of Appeal refused to entertain his application preventing the Secretary General of Parliament from appointment Renuka Herath, next in line from the UNP list in the Nuwara Eliya District, his lawyers have been planning to petition the Supreme Court on his behalf.

This columnist has no intent of commenting on matters before Court. However should SB loose his seat he would be out of politics at least of the parliamentary and legislative type for quite a while, lose his seniority in both parliament and in the UNP.

The irony of the UNP seeking a Presidential pardon for SB is that SB was the person who publicly on TV degraded President Kumaratunga in a manner insulting of all women.

President Kumaratunga has initially indicated that she has a framework for the grant of pardons and SB falls outside of that, unlike President JRJ whose first presidential pardon was that of Gonawala Sunil, a convicted rapist, convicted of raping the teenage daughter of a well-known Colombo doctor, for which obviously the UNP after his pardon made Gonawala Sunil an all Island JP as well.

According to the UNP's own accusations regarding SB Dissanayake prior to his cross over to that party, SB represents violent elections, uncouth language, bad behavior and most things the UNP condemned in the past. Currently with the proverbial shoe on the other foot, the UNP obviously believes that SB Dissanayake Secretary / National Organizing Committee of the UNP represents all it wants to be.