All law-abiding society must share the shocked reaction as expressed in your editorial of 21st March on the grant of Presidential pardon commented upon.

All that the undersigned would like to say is that President Rajapakse’s action is an unfortunate fait accompli. Possibly he – and his legal advisers - will soon realize it was a faux pas. Admittedly, it must make prospects for more and more murder, and other serious crime, with impunity, more favourable.

The view the undersigned urges is that society itself is accountable for creating the culture of legal and moral apathy and insensitivity to victims of crime that produces the legal and moral background for such decision.

Your editorial itself mentions the conviction rate in our Courts is four per cent. In other words, our criminal justice system is a MONSTROUS 96% FAILURE.

It is right to say the Criminal Law is criminal. It is difficult to judge what to say of those who run it.

What is shocking about the situation in Sri Lanka is how the legal system itself, and those running it, with such pretensions to highest learning, are yet so dulled of mind and conscience in tolerating the situation, and see no reflection on themselves in perpetuating it.

Nor has the rest of society itself had the guts to ask them why. There is in fact a despairing air and culture of intellectual gutllessness.

It is for the leaderships of intelligent sections of the community, including the press, to band together to shake the stony indifference towards the serious public dissatisfaction with our legal system.

Your esteemed journal has, in contrast, been a generous host to protestations from the undersigned repeated ad nauseam anything from 10 to 20 years upto now that the criminal law is fundamentally wrong. So fundamentally wrong as to be the direct opposite of what it ought to be. This is what the approximate 100% failure must be read to exactly and incontrovertibly demonstrate. Surely, in a Buddhist country, the universality of the teaching of the pragmatism of the Kalama Sutra cannot be missed?

Throughout the undersigned’s legal career to date of over 25 years, he has found himself in a a conscientious dissent at the Criminal Law’s BLIND FAITH that says an accused is ‘presumed to be innocent until proved guilty’ and as corollary to that, that he has a ‘right to silence’. To him, it is lurid lunacy, a debauch of all rational thought. If such silly talk is tolerated, how is it possible to think of taking evidence in any matter whatever? The way the principle is made to operate in the processes of investigation and trial is the invention of the very Devil designed to frustrate the professed object of conviction and punishment of the guilty. The abominable 100% failure of the law confirms the Devil does his task very well indeed.

In defiance of modesty in order only to tell and emphasize the truth to the world loud and clear, the writer is prepared to declare himself the ‘Galileo of the Law’ in turning right about the abovementioned fond doctrinal chauvinism of English Law into its direct antithesis that A GUILTY ACCUSED MUST AT ONCE CONFESS HIS WRONG.

Which, in the rough, is to be extrapolated to mean he should be judicially interrogated on first arrest – which must end in confession – which must end, by and large, with 96% or more successful prosecutions, and ergo the end of all crime. As simple as that. There will be a near total asphyxiation of crime.

Two fundamental tenets support that revolution, firstly, the Buddha’s word in the Prathimokkha that says precisely that - an offender must confess his wrong. Other religions say the same thing in various ways. The contrary rule of the right to silence of the English Criminal Law must convict itself of an ethics which is diabolical and criminal.

The second, from the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes (1596-1650), admonishes that nothing should be admitted to belief except upon rational certainty.

In the face of both, the principles in question of English Law instantly vanish – one might say like a snow ball in hell.

As Tony Blair once admitted of the English Criminal Law, it is ‘weighted in favour of the criminal and needs re-balancing towards victims of crime’. Nonetheless, he failed in that task. Firstly, he had never heard of the word from the Prathimokkha, nor of the adjuration of Descartes’. So he could not have had the foggiest notion of what a load of absolute bilge the Presumption is. Besides, even if he had, he and all in England are in the grip of English chauvinism with English Law of Crime ruling the world from the pinnacle of the legal pantheon through the Presumption embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11(1). English chauvinism revels in the glory. Englishmen who have the least suspicion of the other side of the picture must experience traumas of dread at the thought of the exposure of the folly they have started and spread around the world, the silly and unmitigated asses they have been, and made the same of the rest of the world. English chauvinism would prefer to hang on to the reign of their native idea, though in fact it is the reign of the very Devil.

Those in leadership positions in legal systems following the English, such as ours, who have such suspicions, owe it to themselves and the rest of their peoples to tell them the truth.

What prevails is a culture of lies.

Possibly, the writer’s evidence before the Presidential Commission on Law and Order appointed – to her credit – by the former President was so persuaded but unfortunately – to her discredit (possibly the former President quailed from putting the revolution through that would have also brought about a cataclysmic dislocation in the legal profession based and living on such gigantic falsehood) and hence suppressed the Commission’s report.

Thus what we have now is not law but a bogus substitute for it. And a most mischievous one at that.

That does not prevent causal laws of moral and social science working undeterred and inexorably like the mills of God, bringing down on the world the brimstone and fire of retribution in the form of the total failure of the law and unrestrained victimization of victims of crime.

Incidentally, the following extract from comments by former Secretary of the UN, Kofi Annan, appearing in an article in the same issue of your esteemed journal reflects exactly the identical problem, the solution to which the learned Secretary General of the UN has been looking for in the following words viz.:

"Throughout the world, the victims of violence and injustices are waiting. They are waiting for us to keep our word. They notice when we use words to mask inaction. They notice when laws should protect them are not applied. I believe we can restore and extend the rule of law throughout the world. But ultimately that will depend on the hold that the law has on our consciences. This Organisation was founded on the ashes of a war that brought untold sorrow to mankind. Today we must look again at our collective conscience, and ask ourselves whether we are doing enough.

Each generation has its part to play in the age-old struggle strengthen the rule of law for all - which alone can ensure freedom for all. Let our generation not be found wanting."

For the part of the undersigned, so as to leave no

room for doubt about his own convictions - he is open to debate - he ventures to firmly state that that solution has dawned in Sri Lanka in the form of the proposals he humbly puts forward. Descartes explains the seeming impudence thus:

"… it is much more custom and example that persuade

us than any certain knowledge. And this despite the

fact that the voice of the majority affords no proof of any

value on matters a little difficult to discover. Such truths

are like to have been discovered by one man more than

by a nation."

The undersigned’s discovery is the result of about 25 years’ conscience-troubled pursuit of the explanation underlying what transpired in the end to be the craziest idea and greatest stupidity human civilization has ever known.

Once the sea-way to India has been discovered, it costs little for anybody to think this out and understand it for himself. Actually, he owes it to himself and all around him, if he cares at all for law and order.

But in the first instance the people of Sri Lanka would no doubt like to see the official document of the Presidential Commission Report on Law and Order. They have a right to see it, considering the devilish mess the law is making of itself.

If this becomes impossible, then the State is open to suspicion. It would be appropriate for law activists both national and international to band together to launch an NGO type Commission of Inquiry headed by a suitably qualified board of eminent persons to g et to the bottom of the hellish 96% failure as an even better expression of a free society in action over its own anxieties and concerns.

This state of affairs cannot - and cannot be allowed to - go on for ever.

Another most significant point, as the writer guesses (everything about the law of crime is wrapt in secrecy and mystery, why?) the ratio of criminals to the rest of society in any society is around max. 5% vs. max. 95%.

The law-abiding max.95% must stop holding themselves in pawn to max. 5% of the scoundrel dregs of society, at the instance of stupid laws and those who man them.

Meantime, also, might not the Fourth Estate strike a blow on behalf of the public interest and initiate a campaign for the release of the report of the above Presidential Commission - certainly a more authoritative word than purely the writer’s comments the public would be prepared to listen to? It is part of the fundamental right to information, an instinct integral to the Fourth Estate. The report is probably the only one of its kind in the world that focused on the prevailing monstrous imbroglio that is actually a constant concomitant wherever the English Criminal Law prevails, not excluding England itself. Though, in the case of England, society may be said to be fortified with other moral ballast that ensure embarrassments of decisions such as here deplored simply do not happen.

Such, Sir, may the writer suggest, is the gauntlet it would be fitting for you, and the national press in general, to pick up? The writer humbly prays the press does so.