Minister of Highways Johnston Fernando yesterday opened the first Home Shop as part of the International Women’s Day programme at Payagala. Women and Child Development, Pre-School & Primary Education, School Infrastructure & Education Services State Minister Piyal Nishantha is also in the picture.

Those who had insulted the Archbishop of Colombo His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith when the Easter Sunday attacks took place, were now trying to use him to gain political mileage, Minister of Highways Johnston Fernando said yesterday at the opening of the first Home Shop.

“When President Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated in 2015, our GDP growth was second only to China. A lot of development activities were taking place here. The country was secure. Treasury had a lot of reserves. That’s why the yahapalana crooks carried out the bond robberies,” he said.

Fernando said that the Opposition now claimed that the government was not punishing those who had carried out the Easter Sunday attacks.

“After the attacks, the Cardinal asked Catholic MPs to push for a presidential commission of inquiry. Because we asked the former President, he appointed a PCoI. Earlier there was a Parliamentary Select Committee on the attacks. On that committee was Rauff Hakeem whose party members were associated with terrorists. There were JVP members who had fielded Ibrahim with terror links on their national list; his sons blew themselves up during the terror attacks. They also got a lot of cash from him. So much for the members of the PSC!”

“It will take months for us to study the report. Even the Cardinal said he was studying the report. Most people have not read it. The report was in English but we needed to translate it to present it to Parliament. Within 20 odd days we translated it into Sinhala. This is the first time that such a sensitive Presidential Commission report has been made public.”

Fernando said that a number of people had been arrested over the Easter Sunday attacks since President Rajapaksa came into power, but cases were not filed because the AG asked the government to wait till the PCoI report was published.