Every government that has ever passed a security law in Sri Lanka has done so with the same reassurance: trust us, we mean well. And every government that followed has proven exactly why that reassurance was never enough. Lionel Bopage, a veteran Sri Lankan political activist and former leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), has issued a stark and timely warning to the current National People's Power (NPP) government — the weapons you forge today will be brandished by someone else tomorrow.
The Dangerous Legacy of Temporary Laws
Sri Lanka's Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) was introduced in 1979 as a temporary measure. Decades later, it remains not only on the books but actively used against journalists, activists, and political dissidents. This pattern is not accidental. It reflects a fundamental truth about how power operates: repressive legal instruments, once created, are rarely dismantled. They are inherited, refined, and weaponized by successive administrations who find them far too convenient to abandon.
Bopage's argument cuts to the heart of a critical democratic principle. Governments should not write laws based on their own good intentions. They should write laws that account for the worst possible successor imaginable. If a law would be dangerous in the hands of an authoritarian, it is dangerous — full stop. The identity of the current government holding that law is simply irrelevant to its long-term threat.
The NPP's Position and Its Responsibilities
The NPP, led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, rose to power on a platform of systemic change, anti-corruption, and democratic renewal. Its supporters placed enormous hope in the movement's ability to break from Sri Lanka's deeply entrenched political culture of impunity and abuse. That hope, however, cannot substitute for structural legal safeguards.
Bopage's critique is not an attack on the NPP's intentions. It is a challenge to its wisdom. A government that genuinely believes in democratic values must demonstrate that belief not by asking citizens to trust its leadership, but by building institutions and laws that do not require trust to function safely. The measure of a democracy is not how power behaves when held by the virtuous. It is how power is constrained when held by the corrupt.
Sri Lanka has lived through enough cycles of political violence, state repression, and institutional collapse to understand this lesson viscerally. The JVP insurrections of 1971 and 1987–89, the brutal civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the systematic use of emergency regulations against civilians — all of these chapters were enabled, at least in part, by legal frameworks that concentrated power without adequate accountability.
Writing Laws for the Worst-Case Successor
The concept Bopage advances is not new in political philosophy, but it is urgently needed in Sri Lanka's current context. When James Madison and the framers of the United States Constitution designed checks and balances, they explicitly assumed that future leaders might be self-interested, corrupt, or tyrannical. They did not design a system for saints. They designed one that could survive scoundrels.
Sri Lanka's legislative culture has historically done the opposite. Laws are passed in moments of crisis or political convenience, often with sunset clauses that never sunset and oversight mechanisms that never function. The PTA is the most glaring example, but it is far from the only one. Emergency regulations, media restrictions, and broad national security provisions have all been used across party lines against the very populations governments claimed to protect.
If the NPP introduces new security legislation without embedding robust independent oversight, clear sunset provisions, judicial review mechanisms, and strong civil liberties protections, it will be making the same mistake every Sri Lankan government before it has made. It will be handing a loaded weapon to whoever comes next.
Civil Society's Role in Holding the Line
Bopage's warning also carries an implicit call to action for Sri Lanka's civil society, legal community, and free press. Democratic accountability does not flow only from good governance. It is actively maintained by citizens, lawyers, journalists, and activists who refuse to stay silent when power overreaches. The same communities that championed the NPP's rise must now hold it to the standards it promised.
History rewards vigilance, not loyalty. Sri Lankans who care about democratic futures must scrutinize every piece of security legislation the NPP proposes with the same critical eye they applied to previous administrations. Partisan affection is the enemy of institutional integrity.
Conclusion: The Test of Democratic Sincerity
Lionel Bopage's message is ultimately a test of democratic sincerity directed at the NPP. Any government can claim to be different. Fewer are willing to prove it by voluntarily limiting their own power through law. Sri Lanka's history is a graveyard of good intentions undone by unchecked authority. The NPP has a rare opportunity to break that cycle — but only if it chooses structural safeguards over self-confidence, and long-term democratic health over short-term political convenience. The weapons forged today will not stay in friendly hands forever.