Monday 17th March, 2025

Leader of the House and Minister Bimal Ratnayake, tabling the Batalanda Commission report in Parliament on Friday, mourned for the thousands of youth killed during the second JVP uprising in the late 1980s. Media reports have said that on listening to Ratnayake, Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickremaratne became choked with emotion and could hardly speak. It is only natural for anyone to be overwhelmed by such a moving narrative. Ratnayake’s speech reminded us of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. Although this poetic elegy is about the horrors of World War I, it has relevance to other conflicts characterised by brutality and senselessness, especially the ones Sri Lanka has experienced. The first stanza of the poem comes to mind:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

The JVP drove tens of thousands of youth to suicide in an abortive bid to capture state power and implement its socialist agenda. It also sought to scuttle the Indo-Lanka Accord, the 13th Amendment, the Provincial Councils and defeat what it called Indian expansionism. The JVP claimed to be using violence as a means to an end, but in reality its savage terror became the means and the end both and eventually proved to be its undoing.

Today, the JVP is ensconced in power, having secured the coveted Executive Presidency and obtained a supermajority in Parliament. But its current agenda is antithetical to its much-avowed goal, which it led thousands of youth to lay down their lives for, in 1971 and during the 1987-89 period. What this glaring contradiction signifies is that the JVP has deep-sixed what those youth strove for. They died in vain. Were they taken for a ride?

The JVP, as the main constituent of the ruling NPP, has embraced the very economic policies it once condemned as neo-imperialist, accepted the 13th Amendment and devolution it went all out to sabotage albeit in vain, mended fences with India, which it likened to an octopus with tentacles spread all over Sri Lanka, opted for a honeymoon with the US, and above all, chose to follow the IMF dictates. It is also enjoying numerous benefits accruing from the Executive Presidency, which it would condemn as a source of evil.

It takes two to tango. The extrajudicial executions at issue must be condemned unreservedly, but they would not have taken place if the JVP had not taken up arms and incited the youth to violence. So, the blame for the savage killings in the late 1980s should be apportioned equally to the UNP and the JVP, which also killed countless dissenters and even traders who sold Indian goods including Bombay onions, which had to be renamed ‘Lanka loku lunu’ to save lives. Besides, it strove to sabotage elections and destroy the economy, seized thousands of firearms and committed many armed robberies in the name of its supposedly socialist cause.

The incumbent NPP government, especially the JVP, which is trying to make itself out to be a paragon of virtue and victim of the UNP’s violence, has done the right thing by tabling the Batalanda Commission report in Parliament. However, a discussion on a spree of counterterror which led to grave violations of human rights cannot be held in isolation of its cause––terror. Therefore, there is a pressing need to probe the JVP’s reign of terror and its heinous crimes as well. That will help make the narrative about the extrajudicial killings in the late 1980s complete. The Batalanda Commission report also sheds light on the JVP’s terrorism. This fact is sure to be highlighted when a parliamentary debate on the report gets underway. The JVP is opening a can or worms.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the Frontline Socialist Party, an offshoot of the JVP, have taken moral high ground, calling upon the government to take action fast in keeping with the recommendations of the Batalanda Commission report. These holier-than-thou characters were also in the JVP when it perpetrated barbaric violence in the late 1980s. They cannot therefore be considered less culpable than the leaders of the UNP and the JVP, where the 1987-89 bloodbath is concerned.

The ongoing Committee Stage of the Budget 2025 debate due to end on March 25 has elicited some, if we may call it that, salacious information of the spending habits of functionaries of the previous regime. While the public was not unaware of the fact that the political hierarchies of successive governments in office lavished tax rupees on themselves, a trend that unfortunately kept growing from regime to regime post-Independence, there was no focus of how badly the situation had deteriorated until some telling figures were presented to parliament during the current budget debate when the spotlight was shone, among others, on the former speaker, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene.

The first volley was fired when some figures on food costs at the speaker’s official residence was revealed. This indicated that Rs. 2.6 million had been spent on food at the speaker’s official residence in 2023 and Rs. 3.2 million on this account the following year. In a strong rebuttal that out stablemate, The Island, headlined “Ex-Speaker lambastes NPP Leader of the House”, Abeywardene denied that he had spent government funds for his personal meals saying that official expenditure incurred entertaining foreign diplomats and visitors had been lumped together to give the people the impression that he was eating off the tax exchequer. The former speaker’s statement might have struck a responsive chord in the public mind had it not been well known that many of his family members had been recruited to his personal and parliament staff following his assumption of office. Some had accompanied him on visits abroad.

Further figures were thereafter presented on the transport expenses of the former speaker, his deputy and the deputy chairman of committees. Leader of the House Bimal Rathnayake revealed that between Jan. 1, 2024 and Sept. 24, 2024, Abeywardene had used six vehicles with a fuel cost of Rs. 33.34 million over a period of nine months. The former deputy speaker had used six vehicles incurring a fuel cost of Rs. 13.5 million and the former deputy chairman of committees four vehicles burning fuel costing Rs. 7.2 million. There is no doubt that ex facie such expenditure is excessive and cannot be defended on any grounds. But also, as the former speaker has said, he is entitled by virtue of the office he holds to his own vehicle and two escort vehicles “as Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya has found out for herself.” Abeywardene has further claimed that the expenses revealed were “statistically impossible” and invited investigative journalists using the Right to Information Act to find out what was spent on his account not only in 2023 and 2024 but also from 2020 when he assumed office as speaker.

Quite apart from the former speaker, the government seized the opportunity of flaunting details of public funds spent on the foreign travel of former presidents with Mahinda Rajapaksa spending some Rs. 3.6 billion between 2010 and 2014; Maithripala Sirisena Rs. 384 million between 2015 and 2019; Gotabaya Rajapaksa Rs. 126 million between 2019 and 2022 and Ranil Wickremesinghe who among other overseas visits attended the funerals of Queen Elizabeth and the Japanese Emperor as well as King Charles’ coronation spending Rs. 533 million. In contrast, incumbent Anura Kumara Dissanayake had spent just Rs. 1.8 million on three foreign trips since he assumed office in Sept. 2024, two of his air tickets being paid by the hosts. Government has also said that Dissanayake had returned unspent per diem allowances paid to him. In that context older readers may remember that Mrs. Bandaranaike as prime minister flew economy class to the consternation of host waiting to welcome her at the foot of the business class exit.

Apart from these there have been revelation of the of the big bucks paid to politicians whose homes and offices were destroyed by mobs at the tail-end of the aragalaya. It has been pointed out that sums running to over Rs. 1.2 billion had been paid to 43 MPs ranging from a relatively modest half million rupees to over Rs. 90 million. Other politicians too, at local government level, have been compensated. This appears to have been done in a hush hush manner with details, including the names of the beneficiaries and what was paid to them emerging only earlier this year. It has been pointed out that the maximum compensation payable to people who have lost their homes in natural disasters is Rs. 1.5 million. After the 1983 riots, the government set up a body called Rehabilitation of Industrial Property Authority (REPIA) to compensate riot victims but payments were relatively low. Over and above that, the media is repleted with stories of the vast amounts spent on former resident Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Colombo residence.

Such to-ing and fro-ing is inevitably the nature of politics. So the former speaker cannot be faulted for taking a side swipe at the current regime by saying that while it presents itself today as a guardian of public funds, the history of the JVP demonstrates that it was responsible for destroying billions of rupees worth of public property during its two insurrections in 1971 and 1988-89. While all this is true, there appears to be a serious effort by the current dispensation to curtail unconscionable benefits enjoyed by politicians. Already MPs must pay realistically for what they eat at the once highly subsidized parliament restaurant and it has been promised that their pensions after a mere five years service are on the way out. Privileges accorded to former presidents too are being trimmed. All to the good.

Saturday 15th March, 2025

There seems to be no end in sight to the ongoing crime wave. Hardly a day passes without an underworld shooting incident reported from some part of the country. The government and the police boast of special operations to neutralize organized criminal groups, but underworld hitmen continue to strike at will.

The latest victim of gun violence is a former prison officer. He was shot dead at his home on Poya Day (13 March). Sridath Dhammika, 61, had served as a Superintendent at the Boossa high security prison before retiring last year.

Dhammika’s killer had not been arrested at the time of writing, and therefore his motive was not known. However, there is reason to believe that the shooter or the person who ordered the killing settled an old score. Underworld characters never forget or forgive their enemies or even those who defy their orders. Prison officers are an endangered breed, especially those who serve in high security jails. In February 2017, an underworld attack on a prison bus left five inmates and two jailers dead in Kalutara.

A large number of powerful crime czars have been held in the Boosa prison over the years. Although these criminals are behind bars, their crime syndicates continue to operate and silence witnesses. Their power is such that in 2020, while being detained in the Boossa Prison, a much-feared underworld figure named Arumahandi Janith Madushanka Silva alias Podi Lassi, and two other underworld characters known as Kosgoda Tharaka and Pitigala Keuma threatened to harm the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary General Kamal Gunaratne, and some senior prison officers. They had the audacity to claim that although they were in jail, their hit squads were active and capable of eliminating anyone.

Podi Lassi, charged with possession of narcotics, was released on bail in December 2024. Lawyers who appeared for him told reporters, after his release, that he needed protection because the STF had threatened him with death. We pointed out in an editorial comment that they had craftily left unsaid that their client issued threats to a Head of State and a Defence Secretary. Everybody knew Podi Lassie would flee the country after being bailed out, and he did. Thankfully, he was arrested in India. This is what happens when criminals are granted bail. The Army deserter who sexually assaulted a doctor at the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital on Tuesday had been granted bail earlier in the day.

Dhammika’s killing is sure to send a chilling message to the prison officer fraternity unless it is found to have nothing to do with the victim’s former job. It is hoped that the police will be able to arrest the killer and establish the motive for the crime fast while leaving no stones unturned in their efforts to track down their missing ‘head’.

It behoves the government to stop concocting conspiracy theories about the rising crime wave and concentrate on devising ways and means of neutralising the netherworld of crime and ensuring public security. Gunmen come, they shoot, and they vanish.