A crucial issue for any type of stability and for good governance in Sri Lanka is the restoration of law and order. Litanies of complaints have been made by politicians and almost everyone else about the pathetic level to which the law and order has deteriorated in Sri Lanka. The joint candidate for the opposition in the coming presidential election has promised that restoration of law and order will be one of the priorities for his office is he is elected as the president.

The issue of law and order in Sri Lanka is essentially about the problem of the crisis of the policing system in Sri Lanka. Any promise to restore law and order would only imply a promise to deal with the enormous crisis besetting the Sri Lankan policing system. In one single word, the disease affecting the Sri Lankan policing system has been characterized by everyone who diagnosed the problem as politicization of the institution. Thus, the problem of law and order restoration in Sri Lanka is one about ending the politicization of the institution.

Ending of the politicization
Ending of the politicization in practical terms would mean having a drastic change at the very top ranks within the policing system itself. The top ranks at present, have been selected through a process of careful cultivation of political connections. On the one hand, the top politicians themselves select the persons on whose loyalty they could rely on for political purposes, as well as for every other purpose including various kinds of corrupt deals, that are known to be done by almost all politicians of any influence within the government. Thus, elimination from the top, those who have made such deals with the politicians is the challenge that will face anyone who wishes to change the policing system in a way that it could be capable of dealing with the problems of law and order.

Crisis at the top ranks
A policing system is a hierarchical system, and the discipline is imposed from the top to the bottom. The crisis of the policing system at present, is that the discipline is lost at the top. Often, the blame for such loss is placed on low-ranking officers. Whenever there is someone to be punished for what is going wrong within the policing system, often some low-ranking officer will be selected for that purpose. The highest rank that would suffer any kind of disciplinary action would not be above the rank of officer in charge of a police station. Even officers in charge of police stations are brought to task only very rarely. It is often the sub-inspectors and constables and even the other officers who serve the police on a contract basis, and the like, who are offered as scapegoats to please the appetites of the public when there is public anger against the indiscipline among the police.

NPC without a quorum
The following letter received by a human rights organization from the secretary of the National Police Commission dated 27^th November 2009 explains the problem of the inquiries into complaints against the police at present.

“In receipt of your letter dated 24^th November 2009 on the above subject. Perhaps you may be aware that the National Police Commission (NPC) has not been meeting since 10^th April 2009 due to want of quorum. The vacancies in the Commission have not been filled as the Constitutional Council has not been constituted. In the interim, the Cabinet of Ministers has decided that all work hitherto done by the NPC should be attended to by the Secretary Ministry of Defence and the IGP.”

The Secretary to the Ministry of Defence
Today, the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence is supposed to be dealing with the indiscipline within the police force. As the Ministry of Defence is the very symbol of the politicization of all the institutions of the state, naturally, the present situation has been arranged in a way to make an even more direct form of politicization of the police possible. Thus, on all matters including the utilization of police for electoral purposes, the secretary of the Ministry of Defence will have free play in dealing with the police officers.

The redeeming of the police force from the grip of the present arrangement for utilizing the police for political purposes would be nothing less than a radical step, and that could only be achieved if there is a political will to do so. Time will test whether such a political will exists within the country.

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