Sunil Vijaya

When will Sri Lankan learn?

It is laughable to note that ‘experts’ emerge after any conflict.  So is the case with the last Sunday’s Diabolical bombing.  In fact, this would have been the most catastrophic incident in Sri Lanka’s recent history where both locals and foreigners perished.

As expats have noted our country lacks professionalism in dealing with situations such as these.  Partly it could be attributed to rigid, regimentalism in the form of bureaucracy which is ingrain in our officials and politicians, blindly following a PROCEDURE where there should be INSTANT action, through common sense.  Every government administrator and security person in this country worry about the losing a pension on a flawed action or a flawed statement and in fact they work in fear of even being kicked out by a higher up in the ladder. as dirty politics rule the country.

The President talks about banning social media and at the same time he divulges how he got to know about the infamous letter” through social media, which has being hovering over the security personnel!

Lack of being Proactive rather than Reactive is another problem which is widespread in our Sri Lanka society.

An appropriate simile would be the role of Quality Control and Quality Assurance.  The latter is the preventative step to be taken before anything happens so that QC testing will be superfluous.  A complaint by a person of a threat is taken lightly by Police and NO action will be taken until the murder takes place.  And that too should be instigated through lodging a complaint to initiate an investigation! This is a joke!

All these decades the Police never felt the need to take Preventative steps to avoid an ‘incident’.  

This must change and must be inculcated to the psych of the Police personnel. 

Another significant flaw in dealing with a situation is the lack of identifying priorities and jumping into action without giving much thought and bungling along the way.  With a lot of experience gained with 30 years of a terrorist war, the security people should by now be in a position to assess a situation quickly and take appropriate actions swiftly.

One of the major flaws seeing in operations especially after the Sunday bombings was a lack of Control over an area – a swift cordon off an area under investigation.  People are seen running around along with army and Police personnel, side by side with media personnel.  The unfortunate incident of 3 officers being killed when the terrorist detonated the bomb while they were conducting a search was mostly unwarranted and which could have been avoided if more caution was taken deploying a number of security personnel.  It was unbelievable to observe women running away from the scene, the house while the only capture was by cameras of media personnel!

Sunil Vijaya