Tuesday 28th April, 2026

The JVP-NPP government has painted itself into a corner and provided another rallying point to its political opponents, who are on the offensive, using the latest scandal as a bludgeon to beat the ruling party leaders with. The last few days have seen Opposition protests against the diversion of Treasury funds (USD 2.5 million) to a rogue account. The protesters would have the public believe that it is the biggest-ever theft of state funds, and the government has no moral right to remain in power. They are demanding that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake resign as the Minister of Finance and Dr. Harshana Suriyapperuma step down as the Secretary to the Finance Ministry.

However, there is a counterargument that cannot be ignored under the principle of natural justice. It posits that the fund diversion happened during a routine process of debt servicing, and the officials who handled the task did not contact the creditor, an Australian agency, despite being alerted by the Central Bank, and ordered the fund transfer, after checking with the phisher, of all people, on the account number. There is no evidence that they sought approval of the senior Treasury officials for the erroneous fund transfer, and the theft happened due to the sheer negligence of some officials in the External Resources Department (ERD).

The incumbent government has earned notoriety for scapegoating state officials, as evident from the manner in which it has sought to defend former Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody, who is embroiled in a coal procurement scam. Therefore, it is only natural that the JVP-NPP administration stands accused of trying to help the President and the Treasury Chief save their skins politically by throwing some ERD officials to the wolves. It is popularly said that he who hath an ill name is half-hanged. Reputations and perceptions do matter in politics, but it is imperative that all aspects of an issue be examined thoroughly during an investigation before conclusions are drawn.

There seems to be no end to the current rulers’ bungling. The government blundered big time by keeping the theft of Treasury funds under wraps. The illegal fund diversion would not have snowballed into a huge political issue if the government had disclosed it immediately after the phishing attack came to light and called in the CID to conduct a probe. Most of all, Parliament should have been informed of the incident without delay.

Having made a colossal blunder that has provided grist to the Opposition’s mill, the least the government can do now to prove its much-touted commitment to upholding accountability and transparency is to heed Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa’s call for appointing a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) headed by an Opposition MP. The PSC proceedings must be open to the media. Ideally, the Opposition should have a majority on the committee, as the SJB has suggested. The government should be able to allow an independent parliamentary probe into the Treasury theft if it has nothing to hide. The public has a right to know the truth.

Many of those who are condemning the government for the illegal fund diversion pretend to be paragons of virtue, but they themselves are tainted. Some of them have a history of cutting numerous corrupt deals and defending crooks while in power. The bigwigs of the SJB and the UNP who are accusing the government of covering up rackets and shielding the corrupt went so far as to deny the Treasury bond scams in 2015 and had no qualms about defending those responsible for that financial crime. They even sought to dilute the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) report on the bond scams, with a slew of footnotes. (Ironically, the JVP itself backed the UNP-led Yahapalana government despite the bond scams and other corrupt deals.) The less said about the SLPP politicians, the better. The SLPP became a metaphor for corruption, while in power, but today its leaders have taken to moral grandstanding and are on a crusade against corruption. They defended Keheliya Rambukwella, who was exposed for procuring substandard medicines and fake cancer drugs.

Sadly, the JVP-NPP government, which came to power, promising to eliminate corruption and usher in good governance, has failed to live up to the expectations of the public, who hoped for a new political culture. Worse, it has created a situation where the crooks out of power are recovering lost ground on the political front.

Monday 27th April, 2026

US President Donald Trump would have the world believe that Saturday evening’s shooting incident during the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner, at the Washington Hilton, was part of a plot to assassinate him. The event had just got underway when shots were heard in a lobby adjoining the ballroom. President Trump, his wife, Vice President J. D. Vance and other government politicians were rushed off the stage unhurt and escorted out of the hotel. Others ran for cover. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The gunman was arrested and identified as Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old from California.

President Trump lost no time in taking to Truth Social, calling the assailant a ‘very sick person’. One cannot but agree with him on this score. Nobody in his proper senses would ever have sought to harm a group of unarmed persons or penetrate a thick security cordon, carrying only a gun and knives, to assassinate the President of the United States. Just like the Californian man now in custody, those who carry out assassinations or order them are ‘very sick people’.

Ironically, President Trump, who ran away on Saturday, fearing a gunman, never misses an opportunity to brag that he had a foreign leader assassinated—Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran. It is ‘very sick people’ who have civilian centres, especially hospitals and schools, bombed in the name of war. During the opening hours of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, on 28 February, a missile struck a girls’ school, killing more than 170 people, most of whom were schoolgirls. There are also videos of brave Iranian doctors and nurses risking their lives to save babies in neonatal intensive care units during airstrikes on hospitals. Only ‘very sick people’ order such attacks, and try to justify them.

President Trump has said that on Saturday evening the assailant was taken down by “brave” Secret Service members, confirming that one officer was shot from a “very close” distance with a “very powerful” gun, but was saved by his bulletproof vest. Thankfully, the incident ended without bloodshed, and the Secret Service members no doubt acted bravely. But there was a serious lapse on their part; the gunman gained access to the Hilton lobby, without being detected, like in a Hollywood political action thriller.

Answering a question about why some people hoped to take his life, President Trump told the media at the White House that while he did not want to say he felt “honored” by having his life threatened, he knew people did not go after those who sat around and did nothing. He added that America was a strong country that was no longer the “laughing stock” of the world. Thus, he has tried to use Saturday’s shooting incident to boost his image, with the midterm elections drawing nearer.

Trump survived an assassination attempt during his re-election campaign in 2024, and that incident stood him in good stead; he made the most of the bullet that grazed his right ear to gain political mileage. Theatrics and rhetoric help gain popular support to win elections. Saturday’s shooting incident also seems to have benefited Trump politically, for it eclipsed a protest by those seeking justice for the victims of the Epstein sex scandal and legal action against all paedophiles who were in league with Epstein. The protesters were projecting images of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein onto the Washington Hilton, when the evening was shattered by gunfire. But for that incident, the protest and the images projected on the hotel would have received much publicity in the US and across the world. Today, the media is full of reports on the shooting incident and Trump’s braggadocio at a subsequent media briefing.

However, the Epstein files will not go away. Conflict in West Asia and promises to make America great again will not help make the damning files disappear. They will continue to dog Trump and there will be no escape for him.

Corruption scandals and blunders of successive governments have bled the state coffers for decades. The Treasury has lost USD 2.5 million again owing to a compromised payment process, and its bigwigs and their political masters are all out to muddy the water. The Opposition is out for their scalps. It never rains but it pours. Scandals have been cropping up in quick succession under the current dispensation.

The JVP-NPP government is in the same predicament as a cantankerous, all-knowing backseat driver suddenly thrust behind the wheel on a treacherous road. Having talked the talk, it now has to walk the walk. Less than two years into office, it has many problems to contend with. The last few weeks have been particularly bad. It must be a fate worse than death for the JVP/NPP leaders, who came to power, condemning previous governments and promising good governance, to be accused of corruption by their political opponents who are known to be utterly corrupt.

The government was reeling from a coal procurement scam that led to the resignation of Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody and Energy Ministry Secretary Udayanga Hemapala, when an NPP propaganda stunt, aimed at boosting the images of the President and the Prime Minister as simple leaders, backfired, with a minister’s palatial house and unexplained assets coming to light. It has now been revealed that the JVP leaders who claimed that their lot was no better than that of the ordinary people are politicians of substantial means. Then, HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery dropped a bombshell. He revealed that Sri Lanka had paid the highest premium for oil in the world, recently. The government had to admit that it purchased diesel at USD 286 a barrel, to replenish stocks, thereby admitting, albeit unwittingly, that the substandard coal imports had led to a shortfall in electricity generation at Norochcholai, and diesel had to be imported at exorbitant prices to keep oil-fired power plants running to prevent power cuts. Now, it is under fire over the transfer of USD 2.5 million from the Treasury to a fake account.

The government has attributed the misdirected Treasury payment to a hacking scheme. But cyber security experts have dismissed this claim as a tall tale. The diversion at issue could not be a simple “hack” and it was rather a case of a compromised payment process, where weak verification layers, email-based instructions, and insufficient system segregation left room for fraud, a fintech expert has told The Island. The government has a penchant for obfuscating issues, but in doing so it only makes matters worse for itself. There is no way it can justify the inordinate delay in reporting the Treasury fraud to the police.

Treasury Chief Dr. Harshana Suriyapperuma has claimed that the government kept the payment scandal under wraps lest the hackers should cover their tracks. The government seems to have a very low opinion of the intelligence of the public. Cyber criminals wipe out all traces of their illegal operations immediately after committing an offence, as is public knowledge. The government should have called in the CID immediately after realising that a misdirected payment had been made and maintained transparency in investigations. Instead, it ordered an internal inquiry. It is only natural that pressure is mounting on the Treasury Chief to step down. Fund transfers go through a layered authorisation process at the Treasury, and a few junior officials must not be scapegoated for the loss at issue. All senior officials who authorised the misdirected payment must be brought to book.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is also the Minister of Finance, claims to have information about all illegal transactions carried out by his predecessors, but he could not prevent a fraud in the Treasury under him.

It is doubtful that the government has taken cyber security seriously. It seems to think the task of preventing cybercrimes is as easy as carrying out social media attacks on its political opponents. The Opposition claims that the Treasury has suffered a huge loss because the officials who handled the fund transfers are not experienced and competent enough to perform such tasks. This allegation must not go uninvestigated. It is imperative that Parliament conduct a special probe into the Treasury fraud, and open it to the media. The public has a right to know what happened to their money, how the fraud happened, who is actually responsible, and what action will be taken to ensure the safety of state funds. It is hoped that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will not appoint a presidential commission to investigate all misdirected payments by state institutions since Independence.