When I was in Sri Lanka I saw that the army has become the dominant economic force in the north.
So for example, our little Canadian delegation flew from Colombo to Jaffna, and the only place you can land is in the middle of an armed forces base. When we got out of the aircraft, despite the agreement that we would then meet with the high command and get a detailed briefing on security, we were informed that the high command wished us to go to a new hotel they had just opened. They wanted photographs taken of the Canadians with the high command in the new hotel to put on their website and to use for whatever promotional purposes. Our security officer from the High Commission said that's not what they had agreed to and that we wouldn't be going there. They replied that was what the high command demanded. The response from our security staff was that we could sit on the tarmac for a very long time, so they should make up their minds. After about 20 minutes they agreed to let us get back to the real schedule and not be props in this economic development theme they were advancing.
Whenever you centralize power in a fashion where there is no right of dissent, where newspapers that have a differing view are shut up and the publishers and staff are beaten up, and where people are white-vanned if they are dissidents, both in the north and in Colombo, things that are going on now—not four years ago, now—then you have no accountability. When there's no accountability, and when you look at a chart that I saw that indicated that direct members of the president's family are in charge of things like the airline, the central bank, some of the mining operations, you begin to get that kind of concentration.
So I would not use the word “corruption”, that would be excessive. But I would say that the normal checks and balances that one has by going to the courts or questioning things do not appear to exist.
Understand that the impeachment of the chief justice came after her court ruled that a law passed in the Colombo Parliament, where the ruling family has two-thirds of the members, removing the taxation powers of what we would call the provinces, was unconstitutional because there had been no consultation about what was a de facto constitutional change to centralize all authority in one place. The response to that ruling was her impeachment, in a fashion that the former chief justice of South Africa in his legal opinion and a distinguished barrister in the U.K. in his legal opinion said was completely unconstitutional and a clear move toward authoritarianism.
When power's that concentrated, when there are no checks and balances, there's no open court process, and there's no due process or real rule of law, I think corruption is inevitable and frankly hard to control. That means there's no distribution to low-income people in terms of their opportunity to build their own lives. That is certainly the truth in the north, and becoming more and more of a problem with respect to the Muslim population. We have testimony from bishops of the church that the Christian community is now facing some of the same constraints and difficulties.
That is not an encouraging message, but I did want to share with you the truth as I understand it to be.