Monday 21st April, 2025

The sixth anniversary of the Easter Sunday terror attacks, which claimed about 270 lives and left more than 500 persons injured, falls today. Those who have lost their near and dear ones in the tragedy are still crying out for justice. There have been four Presidents and three governments since the savage terror attacks, yet the search for the masterminds behind them is still ongoing.

A few weeks ago, the incumbent NPP government had the public believe that it would reveal something earth-shattering about the terror masterminds soon, but it is now humming a different tune. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has reportedly handed over the report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) that probed the Easter Sunday terror attacks to the CID. We thought the CID had received it much earlier!

There have been more questions than answers regarding the Easter Sunday terror attacks, with a host of claims, counterclaims, about-turns, conspiracy theories, and above all, partisan politics complicating both the investigative process and the quest for justice.

There are two main schools of thought in respect of the Easter Sunday carnage. One insists that the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ), which carried out the bombings, was used by some politicians and intelligence bigwigs loyal to them to achieve a political goal whereas the other claims that the NTJ led by Zahran Hashim unleashed terror at the behest of the ISIS. The proponents of the first school of thought have been influenced by a call made by a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) that probed the Easter Sunday carnage, in 2019, for further investigations to ascertain whether there had been an attempt ‘to create and instil fear and uncertainty in the country in the lead-up to the presidential election to be held later in the year’. Their opponents have offered a different narrative.

On 19 May 2021, the then Minister of Public Security Sarath Weerasekra told Parliament that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed that Moulavi Mohamed Ibrahim Mohamad Naufer was the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday attacks. He said so in response to a statement made by Attorney General Dappula De Livera the previous day that there had been ‘a grand conspiracy’ behind the terror attacks.

Maithripala Sirisena, who was the President at the time of the Easter Sunday bombings in 2019, has said that he conveyed some vital information about the tragedy to the government. He has refused to reveal it to the public, and the government has chosen to remain silent on his claim. BBS General Secretary Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera has said he knows who the Easter Sunday terror mastermind is, but he will divulge that information only to the President and the Defence Secretary. When Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa, who was a member of the PSC that probed the Eastern Sunday carnage in 2019, was in the Opposition, he told BBC that according to ‘investigative evidence’ he was privy to, India had been behind the terror attacks. He is now the Cabinet Spokesman. It will be interesting to know the other government leaders’ position on his allegation. Curiously, the CID has not recorded a statement from him on his very serious claim.

Meanwhile, the aforesaid PCoI report contains a Chapter on evidence given by eleven prominent persons, who categorically stated they believed that there had been a foreign hand or conspiracy behind the Easter Sunday carnage. Those witnesses are Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, former President Sirisena, former Minister Rauff Hakeem, former Minister Rishad Bathiudeen, former Governor Azath Salley, SJB MP Mujibur Rahman, former SIS Director SDIG Nilantha Jayawardena, former STF Commandant M. R. Latiff, former Chief of Defence Staff Ravindra Wijegunaratne, former SDIG CID Ravi Seneviratne and former CID Director SSP Shani Abeysekera. Claiming that their statements were mere ipse dixits (assertions made but not proven), the PCoI report has said that no such foreign link was found (p. 472). The Commission should have dug deeper before arriving at such a conclusion. It has, however, recommended that certain identified parties be further investigated. This has not been done. Some of the aforementioned witnesses have since made public statements that contradict their testimonies before the PCoI, and they owe the public an explanation.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake continues to draw heavy flak from the Opposition for repeatedly declaring, at the NPP’s Local Government (LG) election rallies, that he will readily approve financial allocations for the local councils to be won by the NPP and others will face difficulties in obtaining funds as the political rivals of the NPP cannot be considered clean. The Opposition and some election monitors have taken exception to what can be considered a warning issued by President Dissanayake, and brought it to the notice of the Election Commission (EC).

The Government Information Department has denied a media report that the EC issued a letter pertaining President Dissanayake’s aforesaid statement. This is a strange state of affairs in the run-up to a crucial election, where the stakes of the ruling NPP are much higher than those of its rivals.

It is clear to any intelligent person that President Dissanayake is leveraging his position as the Finance Minister in a bid to influence the outcome of the upcoming LG polls. The message he has conveyed to the electorate is loud and clear; the local government institutions will be at his mercy and therefore it is prudent for the public to vote for the NPP and ensure the smooth functioning local councils. The EC ought to take the presidential statement in question seriously and take appropriate action.

It behoves the EC to refrain from acting like the three proverbial monkeys—refusing to hear, speak and see evil—in respect of the presidential statements that have the potential to influence the outcome of the upcoming polls. It has to act in response to the Opposition’s complaints promptly.

If the EC has not reacted to the controversial presidential statement in question, as the Government Information Department has reportedly claimed, it should make its position known to the public without further delay lest its silence should be considered a sign of subservience or partiality to the ruling coalition led by President Dissanayake. It is duty-bound to ensure a level playing field for all political parties and independent groups in the fray. The government must not be allowed to bulldoze its way through at the expense of its political rivals.

The EC should not consider President Dissanayake’s warning at issue as mere campaign rhetoric, for there have been instances where contempt-of-court charges were pressed against some politicians over their political speeches. The imprisonment of S. B. Dissanayake over a derogatory statement he made about the Supreme Court, at a Vap Magul ceremony in Habaraduwa in November 2003 is a case in point.

The Opposition’s reaction to the President’s warning that he will impose restrictions on fund allocations for the local councils to be won by parties other than the NPP has been lukewarm. In fact, the Opposition does not flog any issue hard enough to shape public opinion. It has not even been able to highlight what the Batalanda Commission report says about the JVP’s violent past. The green-channelling of 323 red-flagged freight containers has been forgotten. The Opposition has claimed in Parliament that a member of the incumbent Cabinet was interdicted over a fraud while he was serving in the State Fertilizer Corporation, but it has baulked at naming the person concerned and demanding his resignation from the Cabinet.

The government has been able to distract the Opposition, which has also stopped short of cranking up pressure on the EC to take up the President’s aforesaid warning. The Opposition has not pointed out that the Colombo Municipal Council under UNP control survived several SLFP-led governments including those with two-thirds majorities under President Mahinda Rajapaksa and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Leader of the House and Minister Bimal Ratnayake was spot on when he told Parliament recently that there was no bigger asset to the NPP government than the current Opposition, whose bark was worse than its bite. Nothing can be a graver threat to democracy than the aggressiveness of a powerful government as well as the meekness of the Opposition and the so-called independent commissions.

Saturday 19th April, 2025

Governments with steamroller majorities become impervious to reasoning. Blinded by the arrogance of power, they dig their own political graves. This, we have witnessed on numerous occasions in this country. When ensconced in power, politicians practise the exact opposite of what they preach during their election campaigns.

The JVP-led NPP government finds itself in an unenviable position. It has had some arrests made under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which it used to condemn as a repressive law and pledged to scrap as a national priority. The JVP leaders who were arrested and detained in the late 1980s under the PTA must know what it is like to be held under that draconian law.

There is no way the government can justify the arrest and detention of former State Minister Sivanesanthurai Chandrakanthan alias Pilleyan under the PTA and the statements being made by its leaders that he has been arrested in connection with the Easter Sunday carnage contrary to what is stated in the detention order. Allegations against Pilleyan must be probed and if irrefutable evidence to prove charges against him can be ascertained, he must be prosecuted. But the CID should not have been directed to use the PTA to arrest and detain him.

One of the conditions the EU has laid down for extending GSP+ is the abolition of the PTA. The government will have a hard time convincing the EU that it is serious about doing away with the PTA while using the draconian law selectively to deal with its political opponents.

No one who cherishes human rights and the rule of law will oppose the ongoing investigation into the abduction and disappearance of Vice Chancellor of the Eastern University Prof. Sivasubramaniam Ravindranath in 2006, but on no grounds can the government’s efforts to turn Pilleyan’s detention into a kind of political circus be countenanced.

Meanwhile, the NPP government has used an ad hominem in its argument against attorney-at-law Udaya Gammanpila, who is Pilleyan’s counsel; it has been carrying out irrelevant attacks on Gammanpila and vilifying him instead of addressing his arguments or position on the issue. It has claimed that Gammanpila has no experience whatsoever with handling court cases on his own, and therefore it is puzzling why he has undertaken to handle Pilleyan’s case. In peddling this argument, the government has made a mistake. It is counterproductive for the JVP/NPP to question Gammanpila’s ability to appear for a client in courts on the grounds that he has no experience with handling court cases on his own, for the same logic can be used to bolster the Opposition’s claim that the JVP/NPP, which has not even run a wayside kiosk, is not equal to the task of governing the country.

If the government actually believes that Gammanpila cannot handle Pilleyan’s case properly, it should be happy, for it wants Pilleyan thrown behind bars, doesn’t it? Sun Tzu has said in The Art of War that you must not disturb your enemies when they are making mistakes. If the government thinks Pilleyan has made a mistake by retaining Gammanpila, who, it says, cannot handle his case properly, why should it make an issue of it without keeping quiet?