Thursday 30th April, 2026

US President Donald Trump has lashed out at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for being critical of the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran. Instead of countering the German leader’s compelling arguments, Trump has alleged that Germany is not opposed to Iran’s nuclear programme. He has written in a social media post that Merz thinks it is all right for Iran to have a nuclear weapon and does not know what he is talking about. If Iran had a nuclear weapon, the whole world would be held hostage, Trump has claimed. Merz has said nothing to suggest that Germany is soft on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead, he has very convincingly pointed out that the US-Israeli military strategy is ill-conceived and flawed.

Trump is known for using circular reasoning and false dichotomy when he tries to defend the indefensible. His claim that Iran has to be prevented from acquiring nuclear capability is self-defeating, for US Intelligence Chief Tulsi Gabbard herself has testified before the Congress that Tehran is not building nuclear weapons. Washington has manufactured a casus belli again, the way it did in 2003 to justify the invasion of Iraq; it claimed that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical weapons.

Ironically, President Trump, who has been eyeing the Nobel Peace Prize, is not at peace with the rest of the world, including the NATO member states. Having bombed Iran, destroying assets worth billions of US dollars and killing thousands of civilians, he has opted for negotiations with Tehran. International media reports and defence analysts have indicated that the US has exhausted a substantial portion of some of its missile stockpiles, and now it has to rebuild the inventories, a task that will take a considerable time; this could affect Washington’s preparedness for future conflicts, they have pointed out. Trump is believed to have made a virtue of necessity by declaring a ceasefire.

Merz’s criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran has struck a responsive chord with all peace-loving people around the world. His assessment of the West Asian conflict is spot on. He has rightly pointed out that Washington is being humiliated by Tehran’s negotiating tactics. Iran has openly stated that it did not ask for a ceasefire.

It is obvious that Trump plunged headfirst into war, without having an exit strategy. He and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have expected to make short work of Iran, engineer a regime change and install a puppet regime in Tehran. Iran’s resilience and strategic moves made the US-Israeli military plans go awry.

Merz has cogently argued that the problem with conflicts like the current one in West Asia is that “always you don’t just have to get in – you have to get out again, as was seen in Afghanistan for 20 years and in Iraq”. In Afghanistan, after two decades of fighting, which caused thousands of civilian deaths and cost the western taxpayers about a trillion dollars, the US and its allies replaced the Taliban with the Taliban, as it were.

In an asymmetric engagement, there is hardly anything that the weaker side, fighting for survival, does not weaponise. Iran effectively shifted the war to the economic front while attacking Israel, the US bases in the region and the critical assets of the American allies within its missile range. The closure of the Hormuz Strait, which Iran is using as a strategic lever, has disrupted global oil and fertiliser supplies passing through that chokepoint. Massive oil price hikes could not have come at a worse time for Europe, which is still struggling to deal with the fallout from the Ukraine war and the Covid-19 pandemic. The soaring oil prices have become a double whammy for the European nations as well as others. It is only natural that Europe does not want the West Asian conflict to drag on. US farmers are also complaining of staggering increases in production costs due to soaring fertiliser prices. The US naval blockade has not helped Washington solve the problem—the closure of the Hormuz Strait for international navigation. Oil prices are rising and economies are screaming the world over. Trump has had to clean up the mess he and Netanyahu created in West Asia.

Wednesday 29th April, 2026

The police yesterday intervened to prevent a clash between a group of JVP activists and some Opposition politicians who held a protest near the private residence of Secretary to the Ministry of Finance Dr. Harshana Suriyapperuma, in a Colombo suburb. The protesters complained of a cow dung attack by the JVP members, who denied the charge. Tempers were flaring, and the two groups would have come to blows but for the police presence.

There is no gainsaying that citizens have a right to conduct peaceful protests near state institutions where scandals occur or in other public places. On Monday, a large number of anti-government activists were seen near the Finance Ministry protesting against an illegal diversion of Treasury funds. They shouted themselves hoarse before dispersing. But some self-proclaimed anti-corruption campaigners obviously overstepped their limits and became a nuisance when they protested near Dr. Suriyapperuma’s house the following day. Such demonstrations, in our view, amount to mob intimidation.

The family members of Dr. Suriyapperuma or other Finance Ministry officials obviously have nothing to do with the theft of Treasury funds and must not be made to suffer distress. One may argue that the JVP, which resorted to similar tactics in the past, has been hoist with its own petard. The JVP even made a determined yet abortive bid to march on Parliament at the height of a popular uprising in 2022. If it had succeeded in its endeavour, the country would have been plunged into anarchy. But two wrongs don’t make a right.

Lessons learnt during the final phase of Aragalaya in 2022, when scores of houses belonging to the then ruling party politicians and their family members were torched and an SLPP MP was murdered, must not be forgotten. Protests and counter-protests tend to spiral out of control once tension rises and seething anger blinds mobs to reason. Hence the need for the organisers of such events to act with restraint and take precautions. Political leaders ought to keep troublemakers among their supporters on a tight leash.

Pressure must be ramped up on the government to stop shielding the corrupt and have the Treasury theft and other scandals probed thoroughly, and the Opposition’s right to hold peaceful protests cannot be questioned, but under no circumstance must protesters be allowed to mob the residences of politicians and officials.

Ad hoc funds

Everything seems to have gone wrong at once for the JVP-NPP government. While the Opposition is flogging the issue of a Treasury fund diversion to a rouge account, Chairman of the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) and SJB MP Dr. Harsha de Silva has raised concerns about the legality of the Rebuilding Sri Lanka Fund (RSLF), which was set up in the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah last year.

On Monday, addressing the media, Deputy Minister of Finance Dr. Anil Jayantha Fernando assured the public that the RSLF was safe. Donations had come from Sri Lankans and foreigners in 49 countries, he said, dismissing as baseless a claim that the fund had not been properly utilised. Responding to him, the COPF Chief has said that the RSLF has no legal validity. He has argued in an X message that under the IMF programme several funds were abolished, and only statutory funds are maintained. He has repeatedly questioned the Finance Ministry officials on issues regarding the RSLF only to be informed that they are still working on them, according to his social media post.

The RSLF has been free from allegations of irregularities, but its lack of statutory grounding could give rise to issues about transparency, regulatory oversight and public trust. Statutory recognition will help foreclose criticism that often has a corrosive effect on the integrity of relief funds.

It is hoped that the COPF will ensure that the Finance Ministry officials appear before it and explain why they have made no serious effort to obtain statutory status for the RSLF. The practice of establishing ad hoc relief funds needs to be discontinued.

Tuesday 28th April, 2026

The JVP-NPP government has painted itself into a corner and provided another rallying point to its political opponents, who are on the offensive, using the latest scandal as a bludgeon to beat the ruling party leaders with. The last few days have seen Opposition protests against the diversion of Treasury funds (USD 2.5 million) to a rogue account. The protesters would have the public believe that it is the biggest-ever theft of state funds, and the government has no moral right to remain in power. They are demanding that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake resign as the Minister of Finance and Dr. Harshana Suriyapperuma step down as the Secretary to the Finance Ministry.

However, there is a counterargument that cannot be ignored under the principle of natural justice. It posits that the fund diversion happened during a routine process of debt servicing, and the officials who handled the task did not contact the creditor, an Australian agency, despite being alerted by the Central Bank, and ordered the fund transfer, after checking with the phisher, of all people, on the account number. There is no evidence that they sought approval of the senior Treasury officials for the erroneous fund transfer, and the theft happened due to the sheer negligence of some officials in the External Resources Department (ERD).

The incumbent government has earned notoriety for scapegoating state officials, as evident from the manner in which it has sought to defend former Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody, who is embroiled in a coal procurement scam. Therefore, it is only natural that the JVP-NPP administration stands accused of trying to help the President and the Treasury Chief save their skins politically by throwing some ERD officials to the wolves. It is popularly said that he who hath an ill name is half-hanged. Reputations and perceptions do matter in politics, but it is imperative that all aspects of an issue be examined thoroughly during an investigation before conclusions are drawn.

There seems to be no end to the current rulers’ bungling. The government blundered big time by keeping the theft of Treasury funds under wraps. The illegal fund diversion would not have snowballed into a huge political issue if the government had disclosed it immediately after the phishing attack came to light and called in the CID to conduct a probe. Most of all, Parliament should have been informed of the incident without delay.

Having made a colossal blunder that has provided grist to the Opposition’s mill, the least the government can do now to prove its much-touted commitment to upholding accountability and transparency is to heed Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa’s call for appointing a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) headed by an Opposition MP. The PSC proceedings must be open to the media. Ideally, the Opposition should have a majority on the committee, as the SJB has suggested. The government should be able to allow an independent parliamentary probe into the Treasury theft if it has nothing to hide. The public has a right to know the truth.

Many of those who are condemning the government for the illegal fund diversion pretend to be paragons of virtue, but they themselves are tainted. Some of them have a history of cutting numerous corrupt deals and defending crooks while in power. The bigwigs of the SJB and the UNP who are accusing the government of covering up rackets and shielding the corrupt went so far as to deny the Treasury bond scams in 2015 and had no qualms about defending those responsible for that financial crime. They even sought to dilute the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) report on the bond scams, with a slew of footnotes. (Ironically, the JVP itself backed the UNP-led Yahapalana government despite the bond scams and other corrupt deals.) The less said about the SLPP politicians, the better. The SLPP became a metaphor for corruption, while in power, but today its leaders have taken to moral grandstanding and are on a crusade against corruption. They defended Keheliya Rambukwella, who was exposed for procuring substandard medicines and fake cancer drugs.

Sadly, the JVP-NPP government, which came to power, promising to eliminate corruption and usher in good governance, has failed to live up to the expectations of the public, who hoped for a new political culture. Worse, it has created a situation where the crooks out of power are recovering lost ground on the political front.