THE JUDICIARY, CHECK POINTS AND NATIONAL SECURITY

The Judiciary, Check points and National Security..the list and the sequence says it all.

The Judiciary, which at times acts blind to the stark realities of terrorism devastating the nation, has yet again unfailingly contributed its two cents into the confounding mess which is the average Sri Lankan's daily life. It is true to some extent that the permanent check points may not be the most efficient way of countering modern day terrorism, neither is its economic cost easily justified. Yet, they have acted as a deterrent in many occasions, and the amount of death and devastation they may have prevented by simply being there, cannot be accounted for in any practical sense. Nevertheless as a democracy and a soveriegn nation, Sri Lanka needs to obey the dictum of its judiciary.

The permanent nature of the check points may easily have made them obsolete in more ways than one, since there's more than one way into Colombo and terrorists could easily transfer their lethal weapons into any secure area using their erstwhile collegues in the sympathetic political movements such as the TNA. I wonder whether the TNA ministers' vehicles are ever searched for contraband or weaponry. Most probabaly not, and that raises the interesting question as to when or how long it would take these folks to hatch a plot to slaughter the entire government heirarchy in one go at a common location such as the Parliament.

In any case, most permanent check points were a big yawn to most people, even though they quite well understood the necessity of it. Life at the check point was one which varied between the apologetic to aggressive search by new conscript type soldiers usually accompanied by one or two experienced sharp shooters while the average Sri Lankan commuter inconvenienced by it made an elaborate attempt to hide their frustration bordering on hostility, for the sake of getting thru the process as soon as possible.

While balancing the need to obey the Supreme Court orders against realistic national security concerns, the government security apparatus also needs to continually improve its operational strategies to deal with the evolving realities of the war situation. The Supreme Court ordering the removal of permanent check points conveniently shifts some of the responsibility away from the respective governmental security organizations. And that means there is now someone else to share the blame if something goes wrong, as it did today killing a government minister and also blowing up a telephone box near the Lake House.

Irrespective of what it appears to be superficially, the situation provides a valuable opportunity for the security forces to re-evaluate its operational strategy in this respect and adopt a more effective method of screening which will harness all environmental advatages towards achieving its objective. For instance, surprise check points which close off a road from the front and rear both while armed soldiers speedily scan thru the 'captive' population will garner greater attention and co-operation from the civillians who are alerted to the possibility of the presence of a real threat among them. This creates a situation starkly opposite to the usual situation currently encountered at permanent check points and could result in the development of a collaborative security consiousness between the civillian population and the armed services, instead of alienating them as it does now.

Let us hope our busy and brilliant military planners do not miss out on an opportunity to take advantage of the current events to improve their own performance effectiveness instead of making it an excuse to avoid blame for any future terrorist attacks.