On Monday March 26, 2007 in the early hours of the morning two small sparrow-like aircraft entered the airspace over the Sri Lankan Air Force base at Katunayake, dropped three bombs and returned, unchecked to safety. The whole episode exposed the critical flaws in the political system and the dysfunctional law enforcement and security systems in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has a Titan-like Cabinet of ministers numbering 105. This includes 52 Cabinet ministers, 33 non-Cabinet ministers and 20 deputy ministers. The Executive President has been given Goliath-like powers under the 1978 Constitution. However, the result of such changes has been to create a system that is incoherent and inefficient at all levels. The inefficiency of the political system has seeped down to all layers of the bureaucracy and management in the country. The aberrations that have taken place have deteriorated all aspects of that management.

The Asian Human Rights Commission has for over a decade now consistently pointed out that the 1978 Constitution has introduced an authoritarian style of rule, that Sri Lanka suffers from an exceptional collapse of the rule of law and that the state is unable to protect its people. Actually, this collapse has now reached such a crisis point where the state is unable to protect even its own airspace.

Engrossed in petty political struggles, mostly for self-advancement, the political leaders of the country for several decades have undermined the basic constitutional and legal fabric of the country within which all protection mechanisms have to operate. The callous disregard with which basic norms and standards of ruling have been discarded has resulted in a situation where the operational rules of the state machinery no longer function to any level of credibility.

Strangely the ambitions of the political leaders in recent decades have been to make corruption easier and abuse of power possible without having to suffer any legal consequence. The dismantling of the country’s legal framework was initiated through the 1978 Constitution and by now principles of constitutional governance within a democratic framework is not known within Sri Lanka.

A government that is subjected to questioning in Parliament, that is accountable before the judiciary and can be displaced by means of credible elections does not exist any longer. Under these circumstances words such as accountability and transparency have lost their significance. In the resulting chaos almost anything is now possible.

The attack on the air force base at Katunayake reflects not the success of the LTTE but the failure of the state, which is failing to perform its functions as a state in all aspects of life. The question that anyone would ask is as to who should be held responsible for such gross negligence and for all practical purposes the answer to that question is that no one will be taken to task. When the state degenerates to the extent where no one can be punished for gross negligence and failure to perform their functions what is at stake is society as a whole.

It is reported that an inquiry will be held into the incident. However, the inquiry that is needed is one into all the systemic failures that have created the situation in which gross negligence in all areas of life has become a day-to-day reality. Without dealing with the political responsibility for this overall situation no amount of inquiries will prove adequate.

The government, in recent months, has been preoccupied with witch-hunting its political opponents, attacking dissidents, including the independent media and has been wholly absorbed in propaganda activities for itself. There was even attempts to blame the air attack on some of its prominent critics.

Under these circumstances it is the people themselves who should review what is taking place in their country and how to protect their lives, rights and freedoms. Any revival of political initiatives to deal with the existing problems has to begin from below by the intervention of the people themselves. And if that does not happen the situation may degenerate even further.

When the political system endangers society itself, dealing with that danger should not be left in the hands of the same political leaders who created the danger in the first place.