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Spinning conspiracy theories or launching political manifestos when DISASTER management is the need of the hour

Published

4 years ago

2022/05/7

By Chandre Dharmawardana

There is always a certain amount of truth in all conspiracy theories, putting the blame on the CIA, RAW, the Tiger Diaspora, ISIS, Chinese-Debt Trap, NGOs, etc. But it is NEVER the whole truth. Even looking for the truth becomes secondary when mitigating disaster should become the priority.

The suggestion that the upheaval in Sri Lanka is a part of the rise of drone warfare is just another twist in the current slew of conspiracy theories. The US military machine gaining more and more control of the Electro-Magnetic spectrum is part of the cyber-warfare that started some decades ago. Military satellites that fly over every country, deployed by the US, provide the infrastructure for military deployment of weapons, be they drones or intercontinental missiles.

Military observers expected greater use of drone warfare in Ukraine, but saw very little. Even in Afghanistan where the terrain is difficult, although strategists talked of a drone war to heavily tilt the war to the US, it did not happen.

Similarly, in the battle against ISIS, while some drone hits were used to “remove” a few ISIS leaders, Osama, etc., extensive application of drones did not materialise. Drones have failed to significantly penetrate North Korea. The whole point is, shielding from electromagnetic radiation can be done by simply covering yourself with metal foil (c.f., “Faraday cage”, a technology going back to Michael Faraday of the 19th century).

The US was booted out by Cuban rebels, the Viet Cong, in Iran, and by the primitive Taliban. The US proxy wars in many other places (e. g., Somalia) have stalled in spite of vastly superior technology.

So, most conspiracy theories,are strongly hyped up tabloid stuff without backup evidence from any of the conflict zones or military fronts.

In Sri Lanka, the social unrest started with farmers protesting when they foresaw failed harvests when the government told them to go organic and use traditional methods that avoid agro-chemical inputs. The upper-class proponents of organic farming who had fondly grown tomatoes in their hobby backyards did not know that every kilo of chemical fertiliser has to be replaced by huge amounts (metric tonnes) of organic manure to get viable harvests.

That Sri Lanka is an agrarian society is its strength and its weakness. Successive rulers (except perhaps the Senanayakes) had merely paid lip service to this but gone on to undermine the farmers. The left movements with their accent on urban trade unions and “industrialisation” have been largely detrimental to farmers. Organisations, like MONLAR, support the fertiliser fiasco and idolize Luddites.

The nationalists (be they Sinhala or Tamil) have also been detrimental to farmers in directing them to medieval agricultural practices, claiming that the moderns have allegedly “poisoned mother earth with agrochemicals”. It was Gunadasa Amarasekera who wrote a forward to Channa Jayasumana’s slanderous book named “Wakugadu Hatana”.

So, the “Jathika” movements and their politicians blindly misled the farmers. The consequent protest by farmers was genuine and not spawned by the “CIA” or other agents. The protest by farmers was strengthened by the revolt of the middle-class urban dwellers who couldn’t even cook their meals as the supply of cooking gas dwindled out, or exploded in monkeyed gas cylinders. The usually dormant middle class also came out to protest.

The protest was hijacked and coordinated into a concerted event, using whatsApp and Facebook messages. The slogan “Gota Go Home” was coordinated to appear in all agitations, including in Western Capitals. It is easy to ascertain that the protests in Western capitals were partly coordinated by JVP-linked groups.

While the JVP is ostensibly a leftist Marxist party, it is also alleged to be funded by US-linked political interests; the JVP was a significant component of the US-backed Yahapalanaya government. So, identifying the JVP and some other leftist fronts as mere Western instruments is a common type of conspiracy theory. More realistically, the JVP is an opportunistic political organisation taking funds from anyone without much public backing, but well organised for agitation and propaganda.

The theories on class war and historical materialism have now proved false by post-World-War-I and WWII histories. But they still provide simplified political messages that resonate with some youth groups and an older generation of Marxists still driven by 1950s nostalgia.

The protesters in ‘GotaGoGama’ at Galle Face are supported by meal packets provided by a number of private companies. It has become a surreal “big-match-style” carnival for the middle-class and elite Colombo youth who can pride themselves of being “militant”.

However, all this is now irrelevant. The task of destroying Sri Lanka was during 2012-2022, mostly due to mismanagement by uneducated politicians rather than due to foreign machinations (that were certainly there) or due to corruption (which was certainly there).

From 2009-2011, the Sri Lankan economy grew very fast due to the money poured into infrastructure development (roads, fly-overs, bridges, railways, electric grids, resource structures), and in rehabilitating and de-mining the North and East. But this construction was largely supported by borrowed money. From 2012 onwards the economy dipped downwards. So, most of the forex earnings went to pay loans, buy fuel (energy) and food.

Even in 2009 (and also before and after) I have written many articles and given many seminars, etc., in Sri Lanka emphasising that the money spent for food and fuel can be readily saved by simple locally available technological steps that involve the agricultural sector and the energy sector. [https://dh-web.org/place.names/posts/dev-tech-2009.ppt]

However, politicians preferred turn-key vanity projects that guaranteed earning opportunities for themselves without realising that they are forfeiting the whole country.

Now that the ship has sunk, the politicians have gone to the IMF, the international Shylock. A mere pittance of a loan will come, after agreeing to put “matters right” by “cost cutting”. However, on listening to the speeches by various economists (e.g., Dr. Harsha de Silva of the Opposition) or political leaders (e.g., Anura Kumara Dissanayake) we see that the political leaders do not understand that there is a catastrophe. They are talking of long-term projects like “rapid industrialization”, “cutting corruption”, “jailing the culprits”, etc., that we have heard from them in previous times.

But what about impending riots when famine strikes, garbage accumulates, water pumps stop, hospitals close, etc.,? Where are their disaster plans?

If you are bankrupt, you cannot get loans any more. Mere charity will leave you as a perpetual pauper. So, is Sri Lanka to identify its sellable assets and sell them to international buyers who have the Forex to manage them? The Tea plantations and other agricultural assets, the loss-making SriLankan Airlines and the Ceylon Electricity Board, etc., are they all under the gun? Is this the inevitable fate of small nations that fail to retain self-sufficiency in food and energy supplies? This is made more painful because Sri Lanka was one clear case where such self-sufficiency was possible

Even the UK has sold some of its priced industries, and allowed London to be the centre of questionable money laundering to avert economic collapse that loomed ahead. In Sri Lanka, the collapse has come. Is “the family jewellery” on the auction block?

The politicians planning an interim government or wanting to go it alone have to reveal their plans for facing disaster.

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News

Unions resist tripartite EPF management plan

Published

8 mins ago

2026/10/2

Thilina Walpola

… warn of dire consequences

A group of trade unions and civil society groups has requested President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to abandon his government’s controversial plan for the proposed tripartite management of the EPF.

The group has told the President: “We strongly object to the government’s plan to transfer the EPF to a tripartite board—jointly promoted by the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon (EFC), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO)—and to increase the investments of those funds within private equity and debt markets.

“While the EFC and the government jointly project this plan as a ‘modern governance framework’, it poses a serious threat to the EPF’s financial stability, fiduciary conduct, and returns to workers’ life savings, with severe consequences for broader macroeconomic stability. Rather than replacing the corruption existing in the public sector, this tripartite framework paves the way for a corporate takeover of the EPF. Through this, the fund is exposed to unlawful business practices such as insider trading using internal information of EPF investments, conflicts of interest and corporate bailouts of unstable private companies.

“Sri Lanka’s corporate sector has a tremendously negative track record, which you alluded to during your victorious election campaign in 2024. This was recently unravelled by the multi-billion-dollar illicit capital flight through trade misinvoicing, which your administration is now actively working to curb in the imports sector.

“The recent banking sector fraud exceeds Rs. 13 billion; widespread corporate tax evasion destabilised the fiscal position (Sri Lanka Auditor General’s Department Annual Reports) and consequently inflated the tax burden on the general public. The EFC has found it convenient to remain silent about these crimes, possibly assuming that their silence would preserve their social standing. Considering this inherent corruption within Sri Lanka’s corporate sector and its disregard to the living standards of the general public, there is no realistic basis to integrate corporate interests to actively manage the EPF. The corporate sector of Sri Lanka has not developed sufficiently on technical and ethical grounds to safely entrust the largest retirement savings pool in the country. The EPF is a captive fund that has no mechanism for the owners to divest if the management is corrupt. This further increases the possibility of corporate fraud when the management of the fund is jointly held with the corporate sector.

“Furthermore, during the recent public discussion with trade unions, Deputy Minister of Finance Dr. Anila Jayantha pointed out that the domestic debt restructuring (DDR) would inflict a loss of Rs. 600 billion to the EPF. Our independent calculations—formally submitted as an affidavit to the Supreme Court approved by the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations in 2024—reveal that nominal loss alone is Rs. 634.4 billion. When factoring in foreclosed reinvestment returns, the true loss skyrockets to Rs. 1,711 billion, wiping out 48% of the fund’s projected gross income for the 2023 – 2028 period. Under the pretext of safeguarding the banking system, this colossal robbery preserved high yields on government bonds held by commercial banks and high-net-worth individuals, subsequently reaping them astronomical profits. Now, the exact same plunder is rearing its head again disguised as a tripartite committee.”

“The main arguments supporting our resistance and viable alternatives for optimising EPF management directly under the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), are outlined below.

“Objections to the government’s tripartite proposal:

1. The “International best practice and conflict of interest fallacies”

The government holds that tripartite management of pension funds is the “international best practice” and that there is a “conflict of interest” in CBSL managing the EPF. They are key pillars justifying government’s tripartite proposal.

These two positions are shockingly misleading given that four of the five largest pension funds in the world, in Norway, Japan, the U.S., and Singapore, are managed directly by state bodies or central banks. Therefore, ‘international best practice’ in pension fund management is the exact opposite of what the government and the IMF are proposing. We hence reject these baseless positions.

2. Corporate captivity and bailouts

It is clear that the EFC is desperately pushing for this proposal at a time of global uncertainty, to cushion the effects of the crisis and maximise gains. Under corporate influence within the proposed tripartite board, the private conglomerates can use the multi-trillion-rupee EPF to continue their unstable commercial operations without having to risk their own capital or savings to do so. This will severely erode the financial stability of the EPF and its returns.

3. Risk of front running

“Because the EPF is a colossal fund, its investment decisions can alter asset prices. This creates immense monetary value for the information generated by its investment decisions. Corporate representatives on the proposed tripartite board will be perfectly positioned to use this information to trade ahead of the EPF (front-running), buying assets cheaply and dumping them onto the EPF at inflated prices for guaranteed corporate gain, resulting in a reduction of returns to the EPF.

4. Unavoidable loopholes

“Presence of a separate group of investment analysts, trade union representatives and government officials within the proposed tripartite structure cannot prevent pre-market corporate access to EPF’s investment decisions. Investment proposals made by the analysts has to be first approved by the proposed tripartite committee, making it impossible to prevent corporate access to insider information on EPF investments.”

News

Two arrest warrants issued for Gnanasara thera

Published

9 mins ago

2026/10/2

Thilina Walpola

Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara

The Colombo High Court and Court of Appeal yesterday issued arrest warrants for the Bodu Bala Sena general secretary Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara in a case involving an alleged statement insulting Islam.

The arrest warrants were issued on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Court of Appeal issued an open warrant two weeks after the court rescinded the presidential pardon granted to the thera when he was serving a six-year term for contempt of court.

The Appeals Court also imposed a travel ban on the monk and ordered that the Controller General of Immigration and Emigration be informed of the restriction.

The case was taken up before Colombo High Court Judge Buddhika C. Ragala. Gnanasara Thera was not present when the case was called.

A medical report was submitted stating that Thera was unwell, while his sureties also failed to appear before court. His counsel, Asoka Weerasuriya, told court that his client wished to bring the case to an early conclusion and that representations had been made to the Attorney General in that regard.

However, after considering the submissions, the High Court judge said he was not satisfied with the medical report submitted on behalf of the accused. The court also noted the failure of the sureties to appear.

The judge subsequently ordered that Gnanasara Thera be arrested and produced before court.The Attorney General filed the case under provisions of the Penal Code, alleging that remarks made by Gnanasara Thera concerning the Holy Quran amounted to an insult to Islam.

News

CA dismisses GR’s writ petition against arrest

Published

10 mins ago

2026/10/2

Thilina Walpola

Gotabaya

A two-member bench comprising Court of Appeal President Justice Rohantha Abeysuriya and Justice Sarath Dissanayake yesterday (1) dismissed a writ petition filed by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa seeking judicial intervention to prevent his arrest under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in connection with the ongoing investigations into 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks.

The writ petition was rejected in limine.

In the petition, the former President cited Inspector General of Police Priyantha Weerasooriya, Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Director Shani Abeysekera, the Officer-in-Charge of the CID’s Special Investigations Unit and the Attorney General as respondents. The ex-President sought the court intervention after the arrest of former head of the State Intelligence Service (SIS) retired Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay over the Easter Sunday attacks.

Since then , former Director of Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) has been named as a suspect.

Earlier, the Fort Magistrate’s Court imposed a travel ban on him in relation to investigations stemming from allegations made by Asad Moulana in the Channel 4 documentary on the Easter attacks.