‘Viceroys’ undermining Sri Lanka’s sovereignty – a response

What prompted me to write this letter was the concluding paragraph in Dr. Upul Wijayawardhana’s excellent article, Viceroys’ undermining Sri Lanka’s sovereignty’ published in The Island 24.07.2023. It reads: “Should we allow ambassadors to act as viceroys and interfere in our governance? Definitely not! It is a great shame that we do not have leaders with a backbone who have the guts to take on the new viceroys and show them the way home!”

Dr UW has raised the questions of the conduct of the then Swiss Ambassador within a week of Gota’s election as President and the role played by the current US Ambassador, during the period of the so-called Aragalaya to choose a replacement for Gota.

The entire country was aware how the Swiss Embassy tried to take the Sri Lankan woman concerned to Switzerland in an air ambulance, while denying the Sri Lankan police access to her. The Sri Lankan authorities had to obtain a court order to gain access to the woman since the Embassy failed to provide the identity of their so-called victim although it gave wide publicity to the alleged incident internationally.

The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) issued a statement to the media criticising the lack of due process in the case against their local employee, who was detained (after a court ruling) for falsely claiming that she had been abducted and threatened. The statement issued on 16 December 2019, soon after a face-to-face meeting with Swiss Ambassador Hanspeter Mock with Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, sought to have the world believe that the Sri Lanka authorities (including judiciary) neither followed due process nor complied with international judicial standards nor protected the safety and rights of the accused. https://www.fdfa.admin.ch/eda/en/fdfa/fdfa/aktuell/news.html/content/eda/en/meta/news/2019/12/16/77584?pk_campaign=communique&pk_kwd=@swissmfa&fbclid=IwAR2aoF7BJJqHnw0L5JMabFrV-SUrAlYdVO6iFMr-yq9zk5DN8uMypkPm5i4

As Dr UW has said in his article, many moons later the ‘abducted and tortured’ lady confessed that it was a charade. He (Dr UW) too agrees that her actions amounted to treason as she had purposely tarnished the image of the country of her birth.

The current US Ambassador is alleged to have approached the Speaker and requested him to take over as the President. As Dr UW has said, what authority does she have to do so and does she consider Sri Lanka a US colony?

When foreign diplomats act inappropriately, they are declared ‘persona non grata and expelled from the host countries.

We remember how President Ranasinghe Premadasa declared David Gladstone, who served as Britain’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka between 1987-1991, ‘persona non grata ‘and expelled him from the country for his “unwarranted interference in an internal matter of the country”.

Statements issued by various foreign diplomats, in Colombo, notably those of former and current US ambassadors, almost one after the other concerning the internal affairs of the host country, and reported visits and secret visits said to have been made to meet the opponents of the democratically elected government to matters related to internal politics, are examples of diplomatic excesses.

The government needs to act without further delay and take remedial action to safeguard the country’s sovereignty.

I fully agree with Dr UW that having been the beneficiary of all these machinations to realise his life-long ambition in the most unexpected of circumstances, Wickremesinghe will not take any action against these Viceroys.

Sangadasa Akuruoda