[4] A rather disturbing situation has arisen Sri Lanka in recent weeks. The Inspector General of Police (IGP) has begun to openly challenge the National Police Commission (NPC), which is a constitutional body created by the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. The NPC has powers of appointment, promotion, and disciplinary control over the police in Sri Lanka.
The IGP has openly defied the constitutional position of the NPC and has gone to the media to attack the constitutional authority of the NPC. The implicit position he has taken up is that the powers of appointment, transfer, promotion, and disciplinary control should be vested with him instead, and that the NPC should either fold or come under him. This position is clearly in defiance of the constitution of Sri Lanka.
The IGP is only a civil servant. His powers are determined by law, like that of any other civil servant. The civil servants who become heads of their departments can exercise their power only within the framework of the law. In particular, they must obey the paramount law of the country, which is the constitution. Those who defy the limits of their power and contravene the basic law are acting as illegally as anyone else breaking the law.
The heads of the armed forces and the police also have the function of protecting the constitution. Their positions imply a certain guardianship of the constitution. In a sense they are the executors of trust, and do not have any powers outside the constitution and the law. For a person holding such a post to defy the constitution is to go against the very nature of his or her appointment.
The immediate issue over which the IGP tried to defy the NPC’s authority was disciplinary control of the police. The issue flared into the open when the NPC, acting in compliance with the law, wanted officers facing criminal charges in courts to be interdicted, as required by the establishment code of the country. However, before the issue became public, the IGP strongly resisted the NPC, asserting its constitutional authority on disciplinary control of the police. The matter should have been treated as settled when the Supreme Court made an order refusing to grant leave of application for over twenty fundamental rights applications of interdicted policemen. These policemen had sought to challenge their interdictions. However, the IGP has since gone to various channels, further pursuing his opposition to the NPC’s authority even after the Supreme Court’s decision.
Law enforcement will prove impossible if law enforcers do not respect and obey the law. It is the widespread lawlessness among some members of the police force and the cover-up of that lawlessness by commanding officers that remains the major cause for breakdown of the law in the country. One of the country’s leading jurists, Justice C.G. Weeramantry, former Vice President of the International Court of Justice, recently wrote:
‘The Sri Lankan law and order situation seems to have reached an all-time low. Respect for law and order has broken down at every level. From the humble police constable seeking to bring an offender to book for a minor violation of street rules all the way to the highest levels, there is a denigration of the authority and rigor of the law and the legal process.’
(Published in the Justice page of the Daily Mirror on October 22, 2005)
The AHRC sadly notes that the IGP of the country himself, by his resistance to the constitutional authority of the NPC, is denigrating the ‘authority and rigor of the law and the legal process’. We urge that the constitutional authority of the NPC be respected in order to enhance the rule of law, stability, and human rights in the country.
[4] This was issued as a statement of the AHRC – AS-108-2005 on November 3, 2005
