Friday 28th February, 2025

A surge in underworld activities has left the NPP government red-faced, but it has eclipsed all other issues that remain unsolved. Nobody is talking about the high prices of coconuts, rice and other essentials, and the unfulfilled campaign promises of the ruling coalition. Underworld killings have also distracted the public, the Opposition and the media from Budget 2025, its shortcomings, and the government’s failure to bring the perpetrators of unsolved emblematic crimes to justice. Television channels are devoting prime time to vivid narratives about the slain underworld figure, Ganemulle Sanjeewa, tracing his life from the zygote stage to the zipping bullet that felled him in the dock of a court recently. A statement made by Cabinet Spokesman and Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa about a high-profile financial crime has not received much attention.

Answering a question from a journalist at Tuesday’s post-Cabinet media briefing, Minister Jayatissa said the government was trying to have former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran extradited to stand trial here over the 2015 Treasury bond scams. The case would go on with or without Mahendran being present in court, Dr. Jayatissa said, taking a swipe at former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who, he said, was duty-bound to help bring Mahendran back. He recalled that Wickremesinghe and Mahendran were friends, and Wickremesinghe had told Parliament as the Prime Minister in the Yahapalana government that Mahendran had left the country to attend a wedding.

We can’t think of anything stupider than to expect Wickremesinghe to help bring Mahendran back and commit political hara-kiri in the process. The JVP/NPP has alleged Wickremesinghe’s complicity in what Mahendran did. The incumbent administration came to power, promising to conduct probes into numerous financial crimes that had gone uninvestigated and bring their perpetrators to justice. But one should not be so naïve as to expect the NPP government to go the whole hog to ensure that all those responsible for the Treasury bond scams are punished, for those rackets took place during a JVP-UNP honeymoon.

One may recall that during a heated argument between NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Wickremesinghe, who had just been appointed Prime Minister, in the SLPP government, the latter happened to say that if he divulged certain things, Dissanayake would face serious problems in the JVP. Wickremesinghe’s hard uppercut had the same effect as a stun grenade. The NPP parliamentary group chose to remain silent without calling Wickremesinghe’s bluff. Does Wickremesinghe have aces up his sleeve?

Interestingly, the JVP was part of the Executive Council of the UNP-led Yahapalana government when the first Treasury bond scam was carried out in Feb., 2015, and it had no qualms about continuing to back the UNP to the hilt subsequently. When President Maithripala Sirisena and Mahinda Rajapaksa joined forces to topple the Yahapalana government, the JVP helped Wickremesinghe abort that move, giving that dysfunctional regime a new lease of life to blunder alone, neglect national security and create a situation where the National Thowheed Jamath terrorists could carry out the Easter Sunday attacks with ease. Above all, during the Yahapalana government, the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises), which probed the Treasury bond scams, under JVP stalwart Sunil Handunetti’s chairmanship, carefully avoided mentioning Wickremesinghe as a suspect, in its final report.

The SJB consists of former UNPers, who unashamedly safeguarded Mahendran’s interests in and outside Parliament during the Yahapalana government and even sought to dilute the COPE report on the Treasury bond scams by having a slew of footnotes incorporated into it. It therefore does not want to open a can of worms by calling for Mahendran’s extradition. The SLPP did not even make a serious effort to have Mahendran brought back while it was in power from 2019 to 2024. Some of its key members stand accused of having benefited from the Treasury bond racketeers’ largesse. So, Mahendran can rest assured that neither the incumbent government nor the Opposition will push for his extradition.