Midweek Review

How shoddy handling of accountability issues facilitated anti-Sri Lanka Geneva project

Published

3 years ago

2023/09/20

Sri Lanka’s failure on the Geneva front has facilitated a high profile project to undermine the country’s unitary status. The Geneva role in the controversial bid to introduce a brand new Constitution during the Yahapalana administration with the involvement of the rebel UPFA group (now SLPP) has been quietly forgotten. At one point, Wimal Weerawansa quit the process, warning the then Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa to leave the UNP-led operation or face the consequences.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

In the absence of a cohesive and holistic effort on the part of Sri Lanka, till now, to counter unsubstantiated war crimes allegations, the country remains enmeshed in the Geneva trap.

Sri Lanka brought the war to a successful conclusion in May 2009 in spite of Western efforts at scuttling it, even at the eleventh hour, by dispatching a powerful team of foreign Ministers from the UK and France to prevail on the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa to halt the war when we were on a certain winning path, proving many a pundit wrong.

With such a powerful Western delegation, comprising French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Dr. Bernard Kouchner and Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom David Miliband trailing President Rajapaksa he even conveniently fled to Embilipitiya to avoid them but they pursued him there and pleaded their case in late April 2009. The President simply rejected their plea. So, no wonder, the West left no stone unturned to destroy that government and the Rakapaksas! That is not to say that we consider the Rajapaksas’ to be lily white; they were far from it.

The basis for the continued harassment, and humiliation, of war-winning Sri Lanka, is the report of the Secretary General’s Panel of Experts (PoE) on Accountability here, released on 31 March, 2011. It was authored by Marzuki Darusman (Indonesia), Yasmin Sooka (South Africa) and Steven Ratner (US).

On 01 October, 2015, Sri Lanka became the first country to betray her own armed forces by co-sponsoring UN Human Rights Council’s Resolution 30/1 that ostensibly promoted reconciliation, accountability and human rights. Since then Geneva has gleefully engaged in bashing Sri Lanka annually.

The ongoing 54th Geneva sessions (11 Sept. – 23 Oct., 2023) is no exception. Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative in Geneva Himalee Arunatilaka rejected the latest Geneva statement (written update). The career diplomat also strongly disputed the reference to the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage. That reference, obviously, was based on UK television station Channel 4 allegation that wartime Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa engineered near simultaneous Easter Sunday suicide attacks which claimed the lives of 269 persons, including 45 foreigners, based on an allegation levelled by a sole individual, while trying to seek political asylum in Switzerland.

On the basis of Geneva claims, some of those who successfully spearheaded what was repeatedly dubbed an unwinnable war, have been harshly dealt with. Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Shavendra Silva is one. Maj. Gen. Chagie Gallage, who retired in late 2018, is another. The list is long. When the writer raised the issue with Foreign Minister Ali Sabry, PC, a year ago, he didn’t mince his words when he declared that not only individuals but the entire fighting formations have been condemned.

Sri Lanka never made a genuine effort to address accountability issues. The Rajapaksas unashamedly exploited the Geneva threat to their advantage, whereas other political parties played politics with the issue. Defeated LTTE’s sidekick, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) threw its weight behind the Geneva project.

Arunatilaka who previously served as our Ambassador to Nepal (Oct. 2019 to Dec. 2022) succeeded C.A. Chandraprema in January this year following the election of Ranil Wickremesinghe as President. Parliament elected Wickremesinghe on July 20, 2022, a week after Gotabaya Rajapaksa, elected with a thumping 6.9 mn votes, was forced to flee the country, following an unprecedented public protest campaign over the disruption of basic services, with lavish funding from both local and foreign sources angry with the Rajapaksas. In the latter case they were angry at them for delivering a crushing defeat to the LTTE. The declaration of bankruptcy by the Governor of the Central Bank Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe, during the tail end of Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency, was long overdue. In January, this year, Dr. Weerasinghe said that Sri Lanka had been bankrupt much earlier but didn’t acknowledge the reality.

But the irony is Sri Lanka has gone bankrupt with a foreign debt of little over USD 50 billion, a sizeable amount out of it had been borrowed at high interest rates during the Yahapalana regime (2015-2019). The situation had been exacerbated by that regime loosening exchange controls by doing away with the time-tested Exchange Control Act that had been in place since the early 1950s. As a result, Sri Lanka has been made open to unscrupulous elements to steal valuable foreign exchange from the country. To make the situation worse, even according to Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, some unscrupulous exporters have parked export proceeds abroad to the tune of about USD100 billion that should have been legitimately brought back to Sri Lanka. So in actual fact our bankruptcy is entirely an artificial one created by interested parties! So the billion dollar question is why the government is not taking action to bring back the money that legitimately belongs to this country, or at least name the culprits in public.

At the time Sri Lanka co-sponsored resolution 30/1, career diplomat Ravinatha Aryasinha (currently Executive Director, Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute) served as Permanent Representative there (19 July, 2012 to 31 March, 2018), according to our mission website. The late Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera directed Aryasinha to go ahead, regardless of serious concerns raised by him. At the behest of the then Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, Aryasinha was simply overruled.

Another career diplomat A.L. Azeez succeeded Aryasinha. Azeez and served there from 12 April, 2018 to 31 January, 2020, also according to the website. Therefore, at the time Sri Lanka declared its withdrawal from the Geneva process, on 26 February, 2020, the Geneva position remained vacant. That silly announcement was meant to deceive the gullible people as the ongoing Geneva session reminds Sri Lanka of the tightening noose laid by the West.

Veteran bilingual newspaper columnist Chadraprema served as our PR there 10 Nov., 2020 to 31 Dec., 2022, and was replaced by Arunatilaka, who joined the Foreign Service in 1998.

A pathetic response

Whoever had been at the helm, the Government of Sri Lanka was determined not to set the record straight, both locally and internationally. The war-winning Rajapaksa administration and the Wickremesinghe-Sirisena government, that co-sponsored the treacherous 30/1 US-led resolution in Oct. 2015 against one’s own country, refrained from addressing specific issues. The Gotabaya Rajapaksa government was definitely the worst. Instead of mounting a proper defence, it merely declared the country’s withdrawal from that resolution.

It would be pertinent to mention that Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government hired US-based WR group and a private equity fund manager Imaad Zuberi at a cost of USD 6.5 mn (approximately Rs 1.31 bn) to influence US policy. The payments made over a period of five months, in 2014, were meant to divert US attention from Sri Lanka, ahead of the 2015 Geneva sessions. With the change of government, Sri Lanka joined the US in co-sponsoring a 30/1 resolution against her own armed forces.

In February 2021, Imaad Zuberi was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, foreign influence-peddling and campaign finance violations.

Five years before the endorsement of the 30/1 resolution, the Tamil speaking people, living in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, declared their faith in the warwinning Army Commander, Gen. Sarath Fonseka, for President. The US, too, affirmed her confidence in the SLA by throwing its weight behind Gen. Fonseka, who contested the first national election after the eradication of separatist Tamil terrorism. The Tamil electorate voted for Fonseka against the backdrop of the TNA’s endorsement of the General, whose ruthless tactics brought the LTTE down to its knees within three years. Then why did the Tamil electorate overwhelmingly vote for Fonseka? Had they really despised General Fonseka for Sri Lanka’s triumph over the LTTE, the electorate could have boycotted the poll, regardless of the TNA’s intervention. Let me stress that all those Tamil speaking people, who voted for Fonseka and Commander-in-Chief of armed forces Mahinda Rajapaksa, in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, did so because they appreciated the eradication of the LTTE. That is the truth.

Unfortunately, no government ever referred to this fact in Geneva. Sri Lanka should have taken up this matter with the Sri Lanka Core Group,comprising the US, the UK, Canada, Malawi, Montenegro and North Macedonia, at the UNHRC.

Having endorsed Fonseka at a national election, less than a year after his Army crushed the LTTE, it would be quite absurd for Tamil representatives in Parliament to press for an international inquiry. And those demanding for external intervention are silent on the origins of terrorism. The TNA, instead of demanding an international investigation, should make a public apology for its recognition of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran as the sole representative of the Tamil-speaking people, way back in 2001.

Sri Lanka shouldn’t hesitate to declare a sordid relationship between the TNA and the LTTE before the UNHRC as well as to bring it to the notice of the UN, officially. TNA lawmaker M.A. Sumanthiran, PC, attended meetings on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York. For some strange reason, successive governments refrained from placing all facts, officially, before the international community, thereby allowing all those interested in hounding Sri Lanka for defeating LTTE terrorism, especially in the West, along with their cronies like Malawi, exploit a hapless country.

In fact, there is no point in blaming the Western powers, and India, for Sri Lanka’s pathetic failure to set the record straight no doubt because of their international clout. In addition to the far reaching disclosure made by Lord Naseby in the House of Lords in Oct. 2017 that disputed the very basis of the Darusman report, there were a number of other instances/developments which could have been utilized to build Sri Lanka’s defence. But irresponsible political leadership ignored such developments. Sri Lanka’s first major mistake was its failure to use the overwhelming Tamils’ recognition of General Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election.

Key factors

Having faulted the SLA, on three major counts, the PoE (Panel of Experts) accused Sri Lanka of massacring at least 40,000 civilians. Let me reproduce the paragraph, bearing No. 137, verbatim: “In the limited surveys that have been carried out in the aftermath of the conflict, the percentage of people reporting dead relatives is high. A number of credible sources have estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths. Two years after the end of the war, there is no reliable figure for civilian deaths, but multiple sources of information indicate that a range of up to 40,000 civilian deaths cannot be ruled out at this stage. Only a proper investigation can lead to the identification of all of the victims and to the formulation of an accurate figure for the total number of civilian deaths.”

Those in authority should have paid attention to the following cases. The writer, on numerous occasions, underscored the responsibility on the part of the government to explore ways and means of exploring the following matters as part of overall strategy to build a solid defence (1) Dismissal of war crimes accusations by wartime US Defence Attaché Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith in Colombo. The then US official did so at the May-June 2011 first post-war defence seminar in Colombo, two months after the release of the PoE report. The State Department disputed the official’s right to represent the US at the forum though it refrained from challenging the statement. (2) Examination of the US statement along with Lord Naseby’s Oct. 2017 disclosure based on the then British Defence advisor Lt. Colonel Anthony Gash’s cables to London during the war (Jan.-May 2009). Sri Lanka never used Lord Naseby’s disclosure to her advantage. (3) WikiLeaks revelations that dealt with the Sri Lanka war. A high profile Norwegian study on its role in the Sri Lanka conflict examined some of these cables. However, the Norwegian process never strengthened Sri Lanka’s defence. Instead Norway merely sought to disown its culpability in the events leading to the annihilation of the LTTE. One of the most important WikiLeaks revelations disputed Sri Lanka deliberately targeting civilians. The cable proved that our ground forces took heavy losses by taking the civilian factor into consideration. (4) Wide discrepancies in loss of civilian lives claimed by the UN and various other interested parties. The UN estimated the figure at 40,000 (March 2011) whereas Amnesty International (Sept, 2011) placed the number at 10,000 and a member of the UK Parliament (Sept. 2011) estimated the death toll at 100,000. (5) Disgraceful attempt made by Geneva to exploit the so-called Mannar mass graves during the Yahapalana administration. The Foreign Ministry, under the Yahapalana rule, conveniently remained silent on the Mannar graves, while Western diplomats played politics, only to be proved utterly wrong. Acting at the interest of those hell-bent on blaming Sri Lanka, the then Geneva Chief Michelle Bachet faulted Sri Lanka before the conclusion of the investigation. The then Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran (Jaffna District MP now) rejected scientific findings of the Beta Analytic Institute of Florida, USA, in respect of samples of skeletal remains sent from the Mannar mass grave site. Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet went to the extent of commenting on the Mannar mass grave in her report that dealt with the period from Oct. 2015 to January 2019. We come to wonder whether she was actually a victim of Gen. Pinochet or a mere manufactured victim. Had the US lab issued a report to suit their strategy, would they have accepted fresh tests in case the government of Sri Lanka requested? The following is a relevant section bearing No. 23 from Bachelet’s report: “On May 29, 2018, human skeletal remains were discovered at a construction site in Mannar (Northern Province), Excavations conducted in support of the Office on Missing Persons, revealed a mass grave from which more than 300 skeletons were discovered. It was the second mass grave found in Mannar following the discovery of a site in 2014. Given that other mass graves might be expected to be found in the future, systematic access to grave sites by the Office as an observer is crucial for it to fully discharge its mandate, particularly with regard to the investigation and identification of remains, it is imperative that the proposed reforms on the law relating to inquests, and relevant protocols to operationalize the law be adopted. The capacity of the forensic sector must also be strengthened, including in areas of forensic anthropology, forensic archaeology and genetics, and its coordination with the Office of Missing Persons must be ensured.” (6) Wigneswaran, in his capacity as the then Northern Province Chief Minister in August 2016, accused the Army of killing over 100 LTTE cadres held in rehabilitation facilities. Wigneswaran claimed the detainees had been given poisonous injections resulting in the deaths of 104 persons. The unprecedented accusation made by the retired Supreme Court judge had been timed to attract international attention. Wignewaran is on record as having said a US medical team visiting Jaffna at that time would examine the former rehabilitated LTTE cadres, who he alleged had fallen sick because they were injected with poisonous substances at government detention or rehabilitation centres.

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Midweek Review

NPP drowning in sea of scams

Published

4 days ago

2026/04/29

Sahan Weerasooriya

Outgoing Treasury Chief Mahinda Siriwardena congratulates his successor Harshana Suriyapperuma in late June 2025 at the Finance Ministry

The Opposition is pressing for a one-day debate on USD 2.5 mn Treasury theft, which is more like a daylight robbery that had been kept under wraps by Treasury mandarins till ‘Free Lawyers’ made it public. However, the government is strongly opposed to the Opposition proposal. The Opposition is seeking consensus among

different parties to intensify the campaign against the government, struggling to cope up with a spate of controversies. Against the backdrop of the devastating debate on the coal scam, the NPP seems reluctant to face another over the theft of Treasury funds.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

USD 2.5 mn brazen heist at the Treasury several months ago and the bigwigs there obviously dragging their feet over the matter till it was brought to light recently, thanks to the Free Lawyers movement, which has dampened the NPP’s enthusiasm for May Day. The Treasury fiasco humiliated the cocky NPP leadership against the backdrop of damning report issued by the National Audit Office (NAO) that found fault with the government for awarding the coal tender for 2025/2026 period to Trident Champhar Limited of India in violation of tender procedures. The NAO emphasised that the Indian company shouldn’t have even been considered for the tender.

Even after the exposure of the scandalous handling of the coal tender, the NPP, in spite of some rumblings within the party, remained confident of overcoming the growing accusations regarding governance issues. But, the sudden revelation of the loss suffered by the Treasury, and pathetic efforts made by the NPP to suppress the truth, has caused irreparable harm to the ruling party. The arrogant NPP will have to use May Day to defend the government. Instead of preaching to the masses ad nauseum the corruption allegations against previous administrations, the NPP would have to explain such massive failures/corruption, particularly the loss of USD 2.5 mn.

There hadn’t been a previous instance of such an incident at the Treasury. The NPP will have to answer questions posed by ‘Free Lawyers,’ a civil society group that first raised the Treasury issue. On behalf of ‘Free Lawyers,’ its President Maithri Gunaratne, PC, former Governor of several provinces Rajith Keerthi Tennakoon, and Attorney-at-Law Shiral Lakthikala, targeted the government over the unprecedented Treasury heist. The Opposition, too, censured the NPP, with SJB leader Sajith Premadasa, MP, Chairman of Public Finance Committee (CoPF) Dr. Harsha de Silva, MP, and United Republican Front (URF) taking the lead.

The NPP’s excuses, based on claimed raids carried out by hacker/hackers targeting the Treasury, are untenable. The NPP’s position cannot be defended or supported against growing criticism. The coal scam and Treasury fiasco dominated social media, with the Opposition, as well as ordinary citizens, having a field day at the expense of the NPP, a political party that accused its opponents of waste, corruption, irregularities and mismanagement. Its successful propaganda campaigns, at the presidential and parliamentary polls, in September and November, 2024, respectively, were centered on fighting corruption.

Their anti-corruption platform appealed to the people for obvious reasons. Against the backdrop of bankruptcy, declared in May, 2022, after failing to meet debt commitments, the electorate rallied around the NPP that thrived on waste, corruption, irregularities and mismanagement, perpetrated by previous governments. Having bagged the executive presidency in September, 2024, the NPP assured the electorate that the Parliament would be cleansed of evils at the general election. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared that the people have been vested with the responsibility of cleansing the Parliament. Dissanayake went a step further when he addressed a public gathering at the 18th mile post on the Negombo-Colombo road. The NPP leader, who also leads the JVP, asserted that there was no need for an Opposition in Parliament and the House should be filled with NPPers.

Dissanayake based his assertion essentially on two failed No-Confidence Motions (NCMs) moved against Ravi Karunanayake and Keheliya Rambukwella in 2016 and 2023, respectively. The NPP/JVP leader found fault with Yahapalanaya and the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government for protecting the two wrongdoers, hence the call to cleanse Parliament.

The results of the parliamentary election proved that the electorate responded very favourably to Dissanayake’s call. Of the 225-seat Parliament, the NPP secured 159 seats, including 18 National List slots. Having accused previous governments of shielding wrongdoers, Dissanayake easily directed the NPP’s steamroller parliamentary group to defeat the NCM moved against Energy Minister Punyakumara Dissanayake (National List) on 10 April, just a few days after the NAO report exposed the coal scam.

First ex-MP as Treasury Secy.

If its own hands are clean, there is no doubt that the NPP now deeply regrets the appointment of ex-NPP National List MP Harshana Suriyapperuma as the Secretary to the Treasury and the Finance Ministry. That appointment was made in June 2025 to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Mahinda Siriwardana who, along with Governor of the Central Bank Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe, played a significant role in the country’s post-Aragalaya recovery programme.

Suriyapperuma, who had served as Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning for just seven months, before being appointed the Treasury Secretary/Finance Ministry Secretary, is under heavy fire for suppressing the truth. No less a person than CoPF Chairman Dr. de Silva publicly accused Suriyapperuma of trying to undermine his committee. The SJB has demanded Suriyapperuma’s immediate resignation. Dr. Anil Jayantha succeeded as Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning.

Those who inquired into the crisis-hit Treasury are of the belief that 53-year-old Suriyapperuma lacked the much required experience to fill the shoes of Mahinda Siriwardana. Perhaps, the breach at the Treasury could have been averted if an outsider was not brought in place of Siriwardena. The recent reportage of the incident revealed that Suriyapperuma had been aware of the breach and sought to avoid appearing before the CoPF. The NPP could have responded to the developing situation differently if an ex-MP hadn’t been entrusted with the task of steering the Treasury/Finance Ministry. To make matters worse, President Dissanayake holds the Finance portfolio.

Although the government declared that the theft of USD 2.5 mn had been reported to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) after initial detection made in January this year, controversy surrounds the failure on the part of law enforcement authorities to bring it to the notice of the courts. Maithri Gunaratne, appearing in Hiru last Saturday (25), questioned why the police failed to inform the relevant Magistrate if the government lodged a complaint in that regard.

Australia has confirmed irregularities in payments owed to their government. Regardless of NPP efforts to blame it on hacker/hackers, the truth is clear. Payments have been made to an account that hadn’t been in the original agreement between the governments of Sri Lanka and Australia. That is the undeniable truth that the NPP cannot suppress by propaganda.

The NPP should be ashamed that such a fraud had been perpetrated on a country still struggling to cope up with the economic destruction caused by the UNP- and the SLFP-led governments with the help of “mission impossible” type roles played by outside interests, especially during Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s tenure using the JVP/Aragalaya.

The world knows how the UNP perpetrated the Treasury bond scams with the direct involvement of the then Governor of the Central Bank Arjuna Mahendran, in February 2015 and March 2016. Regardless of that intolerable scam, the UNP made a desperate attempt to retain the services of the Singaporean as the Governor of the Central Bank. Party leader and the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe demanded the re-appointment of Mahendran. That despicable move had to be dropped due to massive Opposition protests and growing public discontent over the Treasury bond scams.

The first Treasury bond scam carried out on 27 February, 2015 caused a direct loss of approximately Rs. 2 billion. On the instructions of Mahendran, the Treasury suddenly and arbitrarily changed the process of issuing Treasury Bonds. According to media reports at that time, higher interest payments, over the next 30 years, caused a further loss of around Rs. 145 billion.

Then Mahendran struck again. Caused further direct losses of more than Rs. 4 billion to the government through the fraudulent increase in interest rates as a result of the Treasury Bond issues on 27th March, 2016 ,and 29th March, 2016, in order to provide an undue advantage to connected primary dealers by indulging in further pre-meditated bond scams.

NPP on back foot

The ruling party put on a brave face with lawmakers and various others trying to play down the incident at the Treasury. Some pathetically tried to compare various accusations directed at the Rajapaksas with the incident at the Treasury which they conveniently blamed on hacker/hackers.

The NPP is facing an explosive mixture of issues. Both the coal and Treasury scams have brought immense pressure on the national economy and caused automatic deterioration. The resignation of Punyakumara aka Kumara Jayakody over the coal scam indicated that defeating the NCM moved against him was a strategic political blunder. Had the NPP asked the tainted first time Minister to step down and appoint a Presidential Commission to go into the coal scam, the NPP could have averted a major disaster. However, the Energy Minister and the Energy Secretary Udayanga Hemapala had to resign before the Parliament took up the NCM. Had the top NPP leadership bothered to peruse the executive summary of the NAO presented to Parliament on 7 April, the Party wouldn’t have tried to defend the minister.

Having championed a corruption-free political party system and then won both the presidential and parliamentary polls on that platform, the NPP executed the shocking move to move 323 containers out of the Colombo Port, in January 2025, without even any cursory checks. Those who perpetrated that operation used continuing port congestion as an excuse to clear red-flagged containers without mandatory physical checking. The NPP recently thwarted a bid by Opposition lawmakers, representing a parliamentary committee inquiring into the illegal release of containers, to summon President Dissanayake.

That committee, headed by Justice Minister Attorney-at-Law Harshana Nanayakkara, owed an explanation as to why President Dissanayake, in his capacity as the Finance Minister, shouldn’t appear before a House committee. President Dissanayake very often addresses Parliament on crucial issues. As the Minister in charge of Finance, the President should offer an explanation regarding the high profile container issue that tarnished the NPP’s image.

Three major issues in hand, namely the release of 323 containers, coal scam and theft at the Treasury, regardless of what various apologists say on mainstream and social media, have caused irrevocable damage to the party, let alone escapades involving the likes of Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne, Minister Lal Kantha, etc. The impact on the NPP can be ascertained only at an election. With the public increasingly aware of the growing accusations against it, the ruling party will do whatever possible to put off long delayed Provincial Council elections. Facing the electorate against deepening discontent among the public seems to be a frightening situation. It would be interesting to observe how a House committee, headed by Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, appointed to explore ways and means to conduct Provincial Council polls, address the issue at hand.

When compared with the three major issues, the resignation of Asoka Ranwala, as the Speaker, in December, 2024, over his failure to produce the much-touted educational qualifications, seems unnecessary. Of course, Ranwala’s case attracted tremendous public attention at that time as the public really believed the NPP wouldn’t deceive them. Ranwala’s lie shocked the public. NPP theoretician Prof. Ranjith Nirmal Dewasiri had no qualms in publicly attacking Ranwala in the wake of the NPP defending the Speaker. But, subsequent NPP actions revealed massive manipulations that shamed the first post-Aragalaya government.

Having accused Ranil Wickremesinghe of squandering as much as Rs 16 mn to join his wife Prof. Maithree in the UK in September, 2023, the NPP has ended up facing far more serious accusations. The incident at the Treasury should be sufficient for the Opposition to move NCM against the government. Of course, the NPP got the numbers in Parliament to easily defeat the NCM but the consequences would be devastating. Those who still talk of recovering the missing USD 2.5 mn must be living in a dreamland. The UNP is labelled with Treasury bond scams (2015 and 2016) and the SLPP faulted with tax cuts (2019) and sugar tax scam (2020). The NPP will have to live with the coal scam and Treasury theft. The NPP will no longer be able to parade on political platforms as paragons of virtue. It would be pertinent to mention that the Presidential Commission appointed to probe the procurement of coal, since 2009, would be able to produce a report to meet the NPP’s expectations. All indications point to that and 2026 is going to be far more challenging, both in and outside Parliament, than the previous year.

NDB fraud

Examined together, the massive fraud at the National Development Bank (NDB), perpetrated during the 2024-2026 period, and the Treasury incident, they underscore the vulnerability of the entire banking system. The 13.2 bn NDB fraud and theft of USD 2.5 mn from the Treasury exposed the regulator, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, in respect of the NDB. The situation at the NDB cannot be examined without taking into consideration that Ernst & Young is the external auditors of the NDB and its Managing Partner Duminda Hulangamuwa functions as Senior Economic Adviser to President Dissanayake. People haven’t forgotten that Hulangamuwa had been mentioned as the possible successor of Mahinda Siriwardena before the NPP brought in Suriyapperuma. The Central Bank and Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) come under the purview of the Finance Ministry now embroiled in the expanding Treasury fiasco.

The Board of Directors at the NDB consists of Sriyan Cooray (Chairman), Kelum Edirisinghe (Director / Chief Executive Officer (Executive), Bernard Sinniah (Director /Non-Independent), Sujeewa Mudalige (Director /Independent), Kushan D’Alwis (Director/Independent), Kasturi Chellaraja (Director/Independent), Shweta Pandey (Director /Independent), Hasitha Premaratne (Director/Independent), Sanjaya Mohottala (Director (Non-Independent) and Shanil Fernando Director (Independent).

The issue at hand is how such a fraud went unnoticed for a considerable period of time and whether the top management simply ignored warning signs and the failure on the part of the regulator to intervene. Those who have read Mahinda Siriwardana’s ‘Sri Lanka’s Economic Revival: Reflections on the Journey from Crisis to Recovery’ would know the circumstances leading to the 2022 economic collapse. Soft spoken Siriwardana meticulously discussed how the then Central Bank leadership as well as the so-called economic leadership of the Pohottuwa party deliberately deceived President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Siriwardena’s narrative is explosive. The book, launched before his retirement, with the participation of President Dissanayake, underscored the responsibility on the part of the political leadership and those running the banking system. Obviously Siriwardena’s work had no impact on the current dispensation as well as the top banking management.

The Opposition sees an apparent opportunity to heap pressure on the NPP as it contemplates counter measures. Their challenge is how to take remedial measures without jeopardizing the government. The IMF declaration that it is closely watching the theft of USD 2.5 mn from the Treasury must have added pressure on the government, ripped apart by the situation at the Treasury. Let us hope the government and the Opposition reach consensus on ways and means to improve financial discipline. Overall, the Parliament cannot absolve itself of the responsibility for enactment of laws and ensuring financial discipline and the fact that Sri Lanka needs to start repayment of debt in 2028.

Midweek Review

Is language social or psychological phenomenon?

Published

4 days ago

2026/04/29

Sahan Weerasooriya

This essay was presented at The Philosophy Group of the University of London about 20 years ago. The thought provoking essay published in The Island on 22 April by Usvwatte-aratchi- Some languages confine you; some languages free you prompted me to try to get this essay published if possible. It may help the readers to further their ideas about the importance of usage of language.

Personally, I have firsthand experience in this subject. I was exposed to two different cultures and two languages. In my formative years I was brought up in a certain culture and spoke the language pertaining to that culture/language (Sinhalese -Sri Lanka). I spent all my studying and working life (55 years) using a different language in a different culture (English -England). I must mention that this was not recently. It was the early 1960’s. I can claim that I have enough knowledge and experience to justify this essay topic. In this essay I shall be investigating some of the social aspects of language with the aid of some opinions put forward by some philosophers. Then I shall be making an attempt to see what psychology has to offer before I draw my own conclusions. I am treating social aspects as part and parcel of the culture. In my view these are inseparable entities, unless one chooses to forget his or her cultural upbringing to suit a particular society.

Adoption of different culture

Socially, learning a different language and adopting a different culture is quite possible. In this case what dominates is one’s attitude or the circumstances. Attitude is psychological. I am convinced that circumstances may lead to a change of attitudes. Having said that, we must not forget that there are individuals who have not taken the trouble to learn the language of the culture in which they live. This has created a lot of socio-psychological problems in the community in which they live. It is obvious that the problem is one of communication. The main tool of communication is language. Philosophers and psychologists have spent many years investigating how language helps us to communicate and also how it may lead us to misunderstand our own fellow human beings. Understanding others (family members, members of the community in which we live, and the strangers we meet) is one of the most important aspects of living.

An awareness of the problem of language goes back to the early Greek philosophers. Parmenides gave us the first example of an argument from language to the world, saying that if we speak of a thing it must exist, since we speak of a thing at various times, it must continue to exist in a particular form. It is recently that language itself has come to be studied in a systematic way. The two landmarks in this respect were the development of Linguistics and the philosophy of language in the 20th century. The great philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) has admitted that until he became a middle-aged man, he did not think about language per se, but regarded it as ‘transparent’. I am sure this is true with most of us although we are not of Russell’s caliber when it comes to philosophy. And one may not have to wait until one reaches one’s middle age.

Linguistics and philosophy of language

It will help us if we understand the difference between Linguistics and philosophy of Language. What linguists discover may be applied to philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology or physiology. But as a discipline of study, it remains independent of them. The philosophy of language is different. One of the modern philosophers John Searle (1932-2025) thought, by contrast to linguistics, philosophy tries to solve philosophical problems by analyzing the ordinary use, meaning and relations of words in a particular language. Searle goes on to say that language is crucial to understand human experience. In my opinion this is a very valid comment. At a very practical level we spend a lot of time sharing our experiences. Verbal communication is vital in this area. According to Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking(1936-2023) the influence of language on philosophy has been profound and almost unrecognized. He indicates, if we are not to be misled by this influence, it is necessary to become conscious of it, and to ask ourselves deliberately how far it is legitimate.

It is appropriate to bring in Ludwig Wittgenstein(1889-1951) at this point. He brought in the subject predicate theory of language. For example, if we say “John is king”. Where John is the subject and king is the predicate. Here existence requires substance. For Aristotle, forms do not exist independently of things—every form is the form of something. A “substantial” form is a kind that is attributed to a thing, without which that thing would be of a different kind or would cease to exist altogether. Wittgenstein supports Saint Augustine’s view that words are names of objects and that combinations of words have the sole function of describing reality. For example, if we point at a certain object, say a table and try to say to a child “this is a table”, the child will be confused as to what we are pointing at. Is it the colour, the tabletop or one or more of its legs This is called the ostensive definition method of teaching. Ostensive definitions lead to a variety of interpretations. The child may understand a particular case of this definition but there is no guarantee that she will be able to make a transition from one case to others like it.

Plato’s theory

J G Herder (1744-1803) pointed out the object to which we make reference may be defined by numerous different terms. How then can we justify direct, one to one correspondence-either of so many to one, or of one to so many? How are we going to deal with situations where a term describes something non-existent or only possible? Plato’s “Forms” theory cannot be applied here as anything that we can speak of already exists as a Form. Critics of this theory ask the question: “how can the world be crowded with so many imaginary objects?” We use words to describe and define. Is there any room for slang language? This comes in handy in our day to day social communication. Ostensive definition raises the questions that require a constant selection of what counts as relevant. In Aldous Huxley’s novel Chrome Yellow, the character Old Rowley is confused as to: Does ‘pig’ refer to the quality of having a curly tail? Or standing in rows to eat? Or being pink skinned and fat? Or wearing no clothes? When we use the word “piggishness” is it something inherent to pigs, or simply, a matter of how we choose to describe them?

How can we relate the above ideas and theories of language to our daily living? Daily living is a psychosocial activity.

Perceptions

The nature of language reflects the nature of our perceptions, and these are far from straight forward. Franz Brentano (1838-1917) developed his theory of intentionality: that every mental phenomenon has a relation of direction to its object, i.e. perceptions, desires, imagination etc. are related to what is perceived, desired or imagined. I presume this can be applied to any language irrespective of the culture (our social conditioning). Say for instance the images of art and the writings are given the ability to represent objects by imposing the intentionality on the object. Thus, when we assert that we see or believe something, we impose, by convention and intention, (that is true if and only if it is the case) on the statement, and these conditions are not contained intrinsically in the sounds that make it up, but in our perception of belief about the fact. I begin to wonder how this can be applied to non-physical and unseen situations. Sometimes our feelings and attitudes are unknown to the observer. A person may shout because he is angry but you cannot see the anger, only its physical expression. We will not be able to see the prior event that has led to the anger and the utterance. This shows that there is a limit to how much is revealed simply by observing a word and its context; there is often more than that can be said.

How can we account for unexpected linguistic behaviour? This has both social and psychological implications.

For a long time behavioural theorists believed that every development of the human being was controlled by environmental and social factors. This is similar to an ostensive explanation of meaning. It implied that everything was learnt through training and association. But Noam Chomsky (b.1928) was not happy with this idea. He thought language is a complex phenomenon and which is not taught bit by bit or systematically to infants. It is successfully acquired by (almost) everybody. From my own experience it is true to say that the difficulty in learning a second language is a very different process from that experienced with the first language. Chomsky argued that the first language is not in fact learned, but rather acquired through exposure to a particular language. According to him all languages share the same basic structure, and he called this “deep structure”, which may be expressed as surface structures through a process called ‘transformation’. Chomsky’s theory helps us to assume a universal system of grammar, which may generate an infinite number of particular sentences within a language. This explains how we may create sentences within a language we have never encountered before from a limited set of grammatical rules and this appears to be a rational scientific approach.

Social or psychological phenomenon

The argument/discussion whether language is a social or a psychological phenomenon requires much more investigation than this essay warrants. I have briefly brought in various philosophers’ work, which are invaluable to this topic in terms of philosophy of language. In conclusion I am tempted to state my own experiences as a bi-lingual person. When it comes to my first language, which is Sinhalese I don’t think I learned it. I heard my parents speaking it and I picked up a few words and I constructed my own sentences and gradually became proficient by accumulating more words. Of course, the proper grammatical use of even my own language was taught in school and not by my parents. Learning my second language i.e. English took a different form. I was taught to speak, read, and write English at school and I had to work harder at this than my first language, because my English was confined to the classroom situation only, i. e. I learnt English in a non- English environment. First language came naturally and the second one I had to learn to fit into the social and the education structure that prevailed at that time. Compulsion can motivate us to learn!I had no choice but to adopt myself culturally and linguistically as a university student in England and then as a university teacher in England. Apart from the native English students, I have taught students from different countries. European, African and Asian. I had the opportunity to intermingle with them and learned various different cultural and linguistic aspects. After almost a half a century in England, I am back to my own culture (language, customs, food etc) where I was born and started my life. I am still proficient in my own language Sinhalese. No conscious effort needed.

After all the foregoing arguments and philosophy that I have put forward, my own conclusion is Chomsky’s theories are more plausible to me than other theories on this issue. It is difficult to be exact and say whether language is a social or psychological phenomenon. From the above arguments, we can see that culture and language of a given society are tightly bound. This leads us to psychological adjustments in order to fit into a society. Who can deny that even the philosophers mentioned above have not been subjected to their own cultural environment?

by Prof. Sampath
Anson Fernando
Formerly University of
The Arts London