What Next?

In an opinion piece we run today, Dr. Upatissa Pethiyagoda, an accomplished scientist who had served the Tea Research Institute in a senior capacity and had also been the Director of the Coconut Research Institute and later Sri Lanka’s ambassador in Rome, has asked the question “What Next?” This relates to the Easter bombs that massacred 279 people in Catholic churches and high-end hotels about two years ago, permanently disabled many and injured many more. These suicide attacks occurred despite credible intelligence that was either ignored or not accorded deserved priority. The conventional wisdom is that these blatant acts of terrorism that attracted worldwide attention could have been avoided if only the available information was acted upon by those responsible for national security and loudly trumpeted allegiance to “good governance.”

Both President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, elected in November 2019 and the government headed by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa that came into office a few months later campaigned on platforms largely focusing on the Easter terror and the failures of their predecessors to avert the massacre. At the time of the last presidential election, a Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCOI), appointed by then President Maithripala Sirisena in September 2019, was already at work probing these terrorist attacks. Its final report following two interim reports in December 2019 and March 2020 was presented to the president on Feb. 1. But for reasons that have not been properly disclosed these reports were not published or made available even to Parliament despite a great deal of pressure that was applied. Such non-disclosure naturally triggered public suspicion that something was being hidden.

The reports were said to contain “sensitive material,” presumably relating to national security that could not be disclosed. Eventually one volume containing conclusions and recommendations was presented to Parliament but with no summary of evidence. The Attorney General is being asked to prosecute those found culpable but without all the recorded evidence at his disposal. “How can he do so?” is a fair question. He has called for such information and on Friday his office confirmed that the remaining 22 volumes had been made available to him following a request he made to the Secretary to the President after he was given only one volume. The whole business is shrouded in secrecy and there has been no clear indication or explanation on why this is so. The report, or parts of which have been tabled, was debated in Parliament last week. The main criticism made in the legislature as well as in the wider public domain is that the mastermind behind one of the worst acts of terrorism the world has recently seen has not been identified.

Whether the evidence that was presented to the PCOI headed by a judge of the Court of Appeal, assisted by another Appeal Court judge, a retired Court of Appeal judge, a retired High Court judge and a former secretary to the Ministry of Justice was insufficient to reach that conclusion though not known is likely. Many believe that if Zaharan Hashim of the National Thowfeek Jamaath was the mastermind, he would not have killed himself in the first wave of attacks. This theory has been widely propounded but whether the commission agreed with it or not is not clear. During the months when the PCOI sat, most of it in public but with evidence led in camera at the request of witnesses or at the commission’s own discretion, what emerged clearly was that there were serious lapses within the state intelligence agencies and the tendency of its senior officers to indulge in finger-pointing to cover their own backs. Even cursory readers of news reports of the commission’s proceeding reached that conclusion.

The former president has flatly denied that he ever received intelligence warnings but the commission has concluded that the “balance of probability” is that he had been provided intelligence reports. The head of national intelligence has been found to have “diluted” Indian intelligence. The PCOI has recommended that the Attorney General “considers” instituting criminal proceedings against the former president who was only briefly present during the parliamentary debate last week but did not participate in it. Naturally the opposition stated that “it would have been good” if he was there (presumably for a longer time). But Sirisena has not demonstrated in his long political career, capped by the presidency he won under fortuitous circumstances as a common opposition candidate, that he had the mettle to confront the kind of situation he would have faced.

A great deal of public money has been spent in this effort to get to the bottom of a crime that has deeply scarred this nation. But whether that objective had been achieved, judging by what the people know so far from sections of the PCOI report that have emerged in the public domain, is not known. Most people believe that the total picture has not been revealed by what was obviously a painstaking inquiry. The commission report, although not all embracing, cannot be considered a total failure. Like the proverbial curate’s egg, it must be good and bad in parts. However that be, there must be much in it that would be useful to rectify existing deficiencies and keeping public figures, be they political or official, on their toes.

But whether the primary object of what has been attempted has been achieved can only be seen if the labours of the commissioners have resulted in the unearthing enough material to bring the perpetrators of the Easter horror to justice. Given that the successful prosecution rate in this country is woefully small, that seems improbable if not impossible. So we go back to the beginning of asking “What next?”