Following in the footsteps of his predecessors, i.e. former Presidents Maithripala Sirisena and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, President Ranil Wickremesinghe has entered the history books as a Sri Lankan President that misused, or had very poor judgement regarding the use of the Executive powers to grant the Presidential pardon.

That is with the exercise of the President’s Executive powers to pardon two convicts, which occurred on 18 July, ahead of his Indian visit. He granted Presidential pardons to two former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) militants, who had been convicted and sentenced for their involvement in the 1996 Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) bombing which claimed over 90 lives and left scores injured and paralysed. Due to the severity of the crime, one of the released convicts had been sentenced to 200 years in prison, while the other had been sentenced to life.

This questionable pardon has already sparked a discussion in the political arena, with Government politicians such as Namal Rajapaksa saying that military personnel who are in prison over various charges should also be granted Presidential pardon. However, compared to past instances of the exercise of the Presidential pardon, especially for murder convicts, regarding which rights groups and public figures actively expressed disapproval, this time, there is a deafening silence. Except a handful of public figures, not even so called human rights groups have raised their voice against the President’s decision, despite the fact that the two former LTTE militants had launched an intentional attack on one of the key public institutions and had killed civilians. This silence tells a lot about how selectively some groups support the defending of human rights, and needless to say, had military personnel launched such an attack in the North or the East, the pardoning of the culprits would have sparked a much bigger furore.

There are many reasons why the President’s decision deserves more attention, one of the main ones being the President continuing the culture of Presidents abusing their pardoning power. While the President does not legally owe an explanation about the exercise of the pardoning power, he has a moral obligation to provide one, because he is pardoning two convicts who committed a crime against the entire country by bombing the country’s main financial institution. The damage it caused includes a large number of human lives, whose families would have believed that justice was served when the Court sentenced the culprits who have now been pardoned. The President should explain what factors made him believe that pardoning two convicts was more important than the lives of nearly hundreds of people who were directly and indirectly affected by the CBSL bombing. 

In addition to the said moral obligation, according to the Assistance to and Protection of Victims of Crime and Witnesses Act as amended, a victim of a crime should have the right to be informed in the event any person in authority considers the granting of a pardon or a remission of sentence to a convict. In addition, without an explanation, the public to whom the President is answerable, would not know whether the President followed the due procedure which involves the Judge/s that sentenced the convicts, the Attorney General and the Justice Minister. Although even the Supreme Court’s (SC) assistance has been sought by rights groups to make the process and criteria pertaining to the President pardoning a convict more accountable and transparent, Sri Lanka is yet to receive such guidelines from the SC or the Human Rights Commission. The President’s decision to pardon two convicts responsible for the deaths of almost 100 persons when there are tens of thousands of convicts who committed lesser crimes is ludicrous in terms of human rights, fairness and logic, and is a prime example that shows the necessity of such guidelines.

Until and unless Sri Lanka introduces such guidelines, Presidents will continue to arbitrarily pardon whoever they think should be pardoned with no sense of responsibility. This is a threat to the public and the country’s judicial system. On the one hand, the President being able to pardon any convict – even someone who has been a part of an act of mass murder – and the President actually exercising that power, shows a serious threat to the public’s safety and accountability that they expect from a Head of State. On the other hand, this is a threat to the judicial system, which is a key element that upholds democracy. If the President can at his will supersede any decision taken by the country’s judicial system with no regard for the evidence and arguments taken into account by the Court when sentencing a person, that itself is a good enough reason to abolish this unwarranted power. Needless to say, the Presidential pardons granted by Wickremesinghe, Rajapaksa and Sirisena all have created doubts in the minds of the public about expecting justice in Sri Lanka, because all verdicts reversed by the three Presidents were high profile cases which took a considerable amount of time to find the suspects guilty.

Speculation is rife that the President’s decision is aimed at appeasing India, North and East based politicians and the international community, because he took this decision ahead of his Indian visit, amidst talks with North and East based politicians, before the all party conference on full implementation of the 13th Amendment, and while dealing with the international community regarding human rights abuse related allegations against the country. If that is true, which many believe is the case, it is unfortunate that the President has resorted to petty, short sighted and ineffective measures such as releasing criminals to make those parties glee. More importantly, it defeats the original purpose of vesting pardoning powers in the Executive President, i.e.to rectify judicial mistakes that place the innocent behind bars, and is tantamount to abusing such an important power for political advantages and against the public mandate.