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Cardinal demands immediate elections to resolve unrest
Amid a protracted economic crisis and what critics see as increasingly harsh crackdowns on anti-government protests, Sri Lanka’s leading Catholic prelate has called for snap elections so the country can select new leadership.
Speaking at a ceremony held to mark the centenary of St. Anthony’s College Katana, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith said an election is necessary as it is not possible to develop the country with rulers who do not love their nation.
“You cannot have a future with those who only think of their survival without thinking of the country’s future,” the 75-year-old prelate said.
Although Sri Lanka is an overwhelmingly Buddhist nation where Catholics comprise only about five percent of the population of 22 million people, Ranjith nevertheless has long played an outsized role as a voice of conscience in national affairs.
Economic mismanagement, coupled with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, left Sri Lanka short of foreign currency reserves for essential imports at the beginning of 2022, triggering the island nation’s worst economic crisis in seven decades.
Severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel led to street protests that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.A new government under President Ranil Wickremesinghe came to power last July and negotiated a bailout package with the International Monetary Fund, the third since a long-running civil war in Sri Lanka finally ended in 2009. Last September, inflation hit an all-time high of 70 percent.
Though economic pressures have begun to ease somewhat, there is still widespread discontent in Sri Lanka, perhaps especially among the country’s youth.\Earlier this month, authorities in Sri Lanka fired tear gas and water cannons on students protesting in the national capital of Colombo to demand the release of dozens of anti-government activists arrested during protests a year ago.
In January, a coalition of human rights groups including Amnesty International called on the government to release a prominent student activism and also sounded alarms over a controversial antiterrorism law which is routinely used to arrest protestors and deny them bail.
Upcoming months will see the next round of austerity moves imposed as part of the agreement with the IMF, which are expected to produce sharp resistance from workers and the poor. The measures include the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the restructuring of the public sector, which may eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, along with deep cuts in social services.
Amid the unrest, the Wickremesinghe government, which came to power without an election, has repeatedly delayed plans for a new round of voting. Most recently, the government postponed local elections set for April 25, arguing that the budget allowed only for “essential expenses” and municipal elections were not essential.
Under Sri Lankan law, the next presidential election must be held sometime before September 2024. Ranjith, however, is insisting on moving to a vote immediately.
“We call for an election so that everyone who is over 18 years of age can decide on the nation’s future,” Ranjith said. “All we see today is an effort to bring in legislations to suppress the people’s rights,” he also said.
… successive governments sat on PCoI report handed over in Feb. 2021
His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith yesterday (21) alleged that those who were in power from 2019 to September 2024 sabotaged investigations into the Easter Sunday carnage (2019).
Addressing the Seventh Year Commemoration of the Easter Sunday suicide attacks, at St. Anthony’s Church Kochchikade, Colombo, the Archbishop of Colombo said that unlike the present leaders of the country, almost all the power holders, since the 2019 April attacks, including former Presidents, Heads of the Police and the AG’s department officials, instead of sincerely finding out as to who and what was behind the horrific crime, tried their best to confuse the public, muddle up the investigations and appointing all kinds of committees, with highly suspect investigators, in order to come out with conclusions crafted by them, and tried to sabotage the truth from emerging.
In spite of the change of government, in September 2024, certain officials of the “deep state” were seeking to obstruct the smooth flow of ongoing investigations.
Regardless of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCOI) giving clear directives to the Attorney General and to that department to take clear legal and disciplinary actions against some of the political figures, officials of the security establishment and organisations for criminal neglect of duty, very little has so far been done on this matter by them.
The PCoI handed over its report to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in February 2021.
The Catholic leader emphasised the need to investigate possible links between the Easter Sunday massacre and attacks, targeting the Muslim community, on the night of 5th May and, once again, on 11th, 12th and 13th May, starting from the Nattandiya-Madampe area, through Kotaramulla to Minuwangoda. The Cardinal said: “This may have a link to the main attacks on 21st April 2019. One must also verify as to whether anyone in the security establishment prevented those responsible from controlling these attacks as and when they began.”
The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) has directed the Secretary General of Parliament Kushani Rohanadeera to cancel an internal transfer of a senior official.
Sources said that the CIABOC intervened as the female official to be transferred is a key witness in the ongoing investigation into the conduct of suspended Deputy Secretary General of Parliament Chaminda Kularatne. The CIABOC has asked the Secretary General to delay the transfer until the conclusion of its investigation.
CIABOC initiated the investigation following a complaint against Kularatne, who himself complained against Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickremaratne over corruption and irregularities.
The female official’s transfer was to take effect on 20 April.
The United Nations has urged Sri Lanka to deliver concrete results after long-running investigations into the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings that killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners.
The UN’s top envoy to the country, Marc-Andre Franche, said survivors and families of victims were still waiting for answers, despite multiple probes and renewed political pledges following the formation of a new government in September 2024.
“Public commitments by the government to pursue justice are important and must be welcomed,” he said, as the nation marked seven years since the bombings on Tuesday.
“But what matters now is results,” he said at a remembrance service in Colombo.
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