Drug related gangland murders have increased alarmingly after the economic crisis occurred, and there are murders, mafia-style, of young folk while they get about their daily errands. All these murders on the wayside are apparently related to drug gangs fighting each other, but why has such mayhem increased due to the economic crisis? What is the connection?
The answer is that the police have a spate of new duties such as policing fuel queues, and maintaining the peace, staving off protestors, and generally trying to ensure that ‘civilian life is undisturbed.’
But does that mean that vital areas of law-enforcement such as controlling gang violence can be ignored? But the police is ignoring nothing. It’s just that they are stretched to the limit these days. Will their inability to carry out law enforcement duties in areas such as containing the drug mafia spill over negatively and impact society at large?
Current crisis
In fact that could be the least of our problems. The current crisis has skewed law and order expectations. The police are on the one hand doing a thankless job. They are being castigated by protestors for protecting the ‘system’, but they’d say they are earning their keep and keeping the peace as best as they could.
Whether protest-control should be seen differently in the context of what’s happening today is a different matter, but what’s important is that a breakdown in law-enforcement would be lethal to society.
Are the seeds of anarchy already being sown with drug related gangland violence not being controlled or policed properly? Are we seeing the first signs that society as we know it could be on the brink of breakdown?
Sri Lanka has been a resilient country in many ways and law and order and law enforcement systems, though severely challenged during times of insurrection and armed hostilities, in the end have held out and served their purpose despite everything. But with regard to the war and to the two insurrections the country experienced, it’s fair to say that these events took place while the rest of society functioned in the main.
Mutiny
There was fuel during the worst period of the terrorist conflict. There were essentials such as medicines except in the central theatre of hostilities perhaps. But with the current crisis things are different. Society as a whole seems to be convulsed by shortages and economic strain, as never before.
Law enforcement is operating within that context. The protestors have even been asking some officers to ‘break ranks’ and join them.
It has not happened and the police has so far by and large protected the ‘system.’ But in so doing they have been stretched to the limits. It means that the normal law and order expectations are sometimes no longer relevant.
That spells some danger to society, as with the gangland wars that were referred to earlier. Bystanders could also get hurt in such shootouts. The situation could lead to some measure of impunity because of the haphasard nature of these crimes and the general inability of law enforcement to deal with them.
So far, general law and order however, has been maintained and in the main, there has not been a general breakdown that has led to mayhem and anarchy in the form of robberies. But it is incumbent on the authorities to plan to deal with the various situations that may arise.
More systemic breakdown is possible. For example, fuel shortages are expected to intensify and not to abate. With all of this there would be more exigencies that require police intervention. There will be more police intervention at the fuel pumps, but also police intervention to control all of the other fallout that may occur due to the increasing situation of shortages expected and occurring.
In the mix of all these problems is the broader question of whether any possibility of police or Army mutiny exists. No, these are not conditions in which questions such as these should not be broached or issues such as this be swept under the carpet.
Security and the maintenance of law and order at some point in the near future may become even more important than addressing the pressing economic issues. The regime would have a direct stake in it. In other words if the loyalty of the police and armed forces by any chance cannot be guaranteed one hundred percent, it is the regime and its individual leadership that would be first endangered.
But also there would be a difficulty maintaining law and order in general terms, to put things mildly. What are the chances of such an eventuality in the near future? Some would say unlikely to nil. But that wouldn’t be a prudent way of looking at things. The recent happenings including the torching of homes and so on and the violence at some fuel queues and protest sites, were not ‘normal’ occurrences by any means.
Exigencies
They are an indication that sometimes — at least in the short-term — things could spiral out of control. The possibilities of different types of exigencies in the security realm can be listed out for example. Mutiny as a possibility exists, though remote.
Could there be an increase in law enforcement breaches in banks or financial institutions for instance? Should security be bolstered? But more importantly, would the basic social fabric hold?
If it does how much of that would society in general perhaps justify? It cannot be forgotten that there is a considerable cross section of society that could be in support of power transitions that happen through unorthodox and so called undemocratic means.
In other words the spate of gangland killings hopefully is contained within the drug mafiosi. Hopefully there won’t be other major security related challenges, and the police would be free to do what they are doing now — the duties that come with manning fuel stations and protest sites and so on.
But the recipe for getting the economy back on track may not be palatable to a great many people. This is why presumably the Government is taking law enforcement challenges seriously. The recent changes in the army’s hierarchical structure may have been a case in point. Besides all that, food security is a problem as well, and may become a worse problem as the weeks go by. Though there have been countries as large and powerful as the US stepping up to help in this area, if there would be food scarcities in the near future despite this, that could be the last straw for a lot of people.
Society may implode in ways hitherto unimagined.
Policing alone would not ensure that law and order may be maintained in this situation. There would also have to be coordination among the police and the army especially in the context that in recent incidents, there have been situations in which both the army and the police have been found wanting in terms of addressing arson attacks and so on.
The Bar Association made it clear that there would be no legal assistance for those engaged in arson and rioting. This is good policy as the legitimate protests of people were undermined by some of the arson attacks and assaults and so on. It was non-violence that gave protestors the stamp of authority.
But, all that was at stake when those who may have had nothing to do with the protests went on a burning and looting spree. Only some of it can be put down to a spontaneous reaction and anger.
The rest was a case of rowdy elements going berserk, and that is not what the protestors wanted under any circumstances, it is clear. By protestors it’s meant the ordinary people in particular that had genuine grievances due the implosion of the economy in the last few months. It’s these hapless people that are the most important in everything that’s going on. It’s their lives that matter most and that’s something that can never be forgotten.