Public discipline, panacea for all ills

by Jaliya WIJEYEKOON

Our country presently known as Sri Lanka has a recorded history of over 2500 years and even prior to that or from the time immemorial there had been some kind of administration and the people of our country were ruled by traditional kings, provincial chieftains or self appointed area leaders.

During those times ordinary people of the country lived like slaves and no freedom was allowed. As the verdict of the bench was always, final and not challengeable, there would have been wrong judgements, and sentences meted out on ordinary people those days.

As the time passed by our country was invaded by various foreign powers. Some were able to occupy only different parts of our country. Due to short sighted policies and specially owing to the disunity prevalent among our rulers, finally we became a colony of the British empire in 1815.

The Britishers ruled our country for over 13 decades and a deep impact was made on all aspects of the lives of our people and in all spheres of the country.

Our Colonial masters introduced the missionary education through which they managed to propagate the religion as well.Our culture, civilization. education, economy, governance, rule of Law, judiciary and almost everything changed with the British rule in the country.

There are reservations, different opinions, contradictory views, arguable sayings and debatable expressions with regard to the presence of British rule in our country.

But it is an accepted fact that with the introduction of the judicial system, Police and armed forces by the British authorities people became more civilized and disciplined.We gained independence in 1948 and continued to follow the above system for the civil administration in our country.

Among all other institutions the Sri Lanka Police played a pivotal role in the civil administration of the society and people adorned this institution for its invaluable services.

The very letters of this word POLICE stand for Politeness, Obedience, Loyalty, Integrity, Courtesy and Efficiency.

The word itself is quite able to prove how the police should be in discharging their duties.

But most unfortunately at present, leave alone lower rankers even some higher ups in the police force seem not to have heard how this solemn word "Police" has been formed.

If they have at least an iota of knowledge about the valuable profession in which they are engaged, they will not venture into horribly violent acts like gruesome murders that occurred at Angulana recently.

It is quite understandable as we have heard in the history (Past, distant past and recent past) that there had been killings reported in our country during chaotic situations and specially when the legally and democratically elected Govt. was under unlawful threat.

But under normal circumstances there is a standard procedure to apprehend a suspect, conduct investigations, produce suspects before courts for the final verdict where the suspect also has a right to defend himself.It is the common belief that there is a handful of nasty officers in the police whose demeanour reflects extremely badly against the entire department which is supposed to be doing a great service to the civil society.

Now the time is quite ripe for the IGP and the decision makers of the Police Department to initiate disciplinary action against the corrupt officers to save the image of the entire police department.