Monday 16th June, 2025

Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith can be proud of many achievements; yet one key mission remains unfulfilled—his endeavour to secure justice for the victims of the Easter Sunday carnage. During a service at St. Anthony’s Shrine, Kochchikade, on Thursday, he expressed disappointment with the incumbent government’s failure to fulfil its pledge to have justice served to the victims of the 2019 terror attacks. He lamented that a slew of recommendations made by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), which probed the Easter Sunday terror attacks, had gone unimplemented. He criticised the Attorney General’s Department for not implementing the PCoI recommendation that legal action be instituted against a former President and some police and intelligence officers for their negligence.

The Archbishop’s disappointment is understandable. Ably assisted by others, he led a successful campaign to prevent a bloody backlash following the Easter Sunday terror attacks, which claimed over 270 lives and left hundreds of others injured. Appealing for restraint, he made a solemn pledge to ensure that justice would be served expeditiously. Six years have elapsed and we have had three governments and four Presidents since the carnage that shook the world. The SLPP came to power, promising justice to the victims of the terror attacks. So did the NPP. Those promises stood both parties in good stead electorally in 2019 and in 2024 respectively. The NPP is lucky that Cardinal Ranjith did not slam it in the run-up to the 06 May local government elections.

Sri Lankan politicians are very ‘promising’. They are apparently adept at only one thing— making promises. They have turned elections into promise-making contests. One may recall how the SLFP-led United Front promised ‘rice from the moon’, of all places, and garnered favour with the rice-loving electorate to win the 1970 general election. In 1977, the UNP promised a righteous society, but after being ensconced in power, it had a notorious killer and rapist given a presidential pardon and released from jail and resorted to barbaric violence to retain its hold on power.

Isms that Sri Lankan politicians profess may be different, ideologically and politically, but there is one particular ism that serves as a common denominator of all of them—their adherence to Machiavellianism. Their guiding principle appears to be that ‘the promise given was a necessity of the past; the word broken is a necessity of the present’. So, it is not surprising that the SLPP reneged on its promise to Cardinal Ranjith, and the NPP has done likewise.

It has been alleged that the SLPP government delayed investigations into the Easter Sunday attacks as it wanted to cover up some military intelligence officers’ links to the terrorists who carried them out. Those who were seeking justice for the terror victims pinned their hopes on the NPP. But the Public Security Ministry and the CID are now under the influence of two former police officers who were at the helm of the CID at the time of the Easter Sunday attacks and faced allegations of failure to act on warnings of impending terror strikes in 2019; these officers were catapulted to their current high-level positions because they are prominent members of the NPP’s Retired Police Collective. So, the integrity of the CID probe into the Easter Sunday carnage is already compromised, as we have argued in a previous comment.

It is doubtful whether even the main Opposition party, the SJB, will go all out to have the Easter Sunday carnage thoroughly probed in case of being able to form a government, for its seniors were in the Yahapalana government, which the PCoI has held accountable for the tragedy. “The dysfunctional Government was a major contributory factor for the events that took place on 21st April 2019. The Government including President Sirisena and Prime Minister is accountable for the tragedy” (PCoI Report, pp. 470-471). The JVP backed that UNP-led administration to the hilt by helping it retain a working majority in Parliament.

Thus, having justice served to the Easter Sunday carnage victims, with the help of politicians and political parties, will remain an extremely uphill task. It looks as if the seekers of justice were left with no alternative but to rally the public to accomplish their mission.

Glorious uncertainties define both cricket and power politics—where nothing is more certain than the unexpected. Explosive starts therein do not necessarily guarantee smooth sailing or easy victories; unforeseen trouble comes from unexpected quarters. Whoever would have thought that the people would ever rise against the SLPP government elected by them with a two-thirds majority in 2020, and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former military officer, would head for the hills a little over two years into office? So, it is only natural that the NPP government is experiencing difficulties on all fronts.

The NPP may have expected the 06 May local government (LG) polls to be a walk in the park for it, but their outcome has left 178 out of 339 local councils hung. It has since been trying to seize control of the councils where it obtained more seats than the runners-up, but could not secure absolute majorities. It has also had to bite the bullet and resort to horse-trading, just like other parties, to enlist the support of its rivals to muster working majorities in the councils where it has obtained pluralities.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake warned, before the 06 May LG polls, that if the NPP’s rivals won any LG bodies, those councils would find it extremely difficult to receive state funds, and that it was therefore prudent for the public to vote for the NPP so that their interests would be served better; the government politicians have been repeating this warning since the conclusion of the polls as well in a bid to prevent its opponents from gaining control of the hung councils. But the Opposition parties, especially the SJB, the SLPP, the UNP and the UPFA, have already closed ranks and seized control of several hung councils, including the Kadugannawa Urban Council, the Kuliyapitiya PS, and the Udubeddera PS. The SLPP, which could not win a single council in last month’s election, has had its members appointed Chairpersons in a couple of LG bodies, with the help of other parties!

Whether the NPP government will shoot itself in the foot by carrying out its threat to stop allocating funds to the local councils which the Opposition has gained control of remains to be seen. Such a drastic course of action will lead to battles on both legal and political fronts and cause public opinion to turn against the government, which has promised to adopt democratic best practices and lead by example.

Some of the Opposition parties have formed a common front, and their coming together bodes ill for the NPP, for that will make the ongoing anti-government campaign better focused and more aggressive. This must be a disquieting proposition for the NPP, which has benefited from its rivals’ disunity. The SJB, the UNP, the SLPP and the UPFA have made a public pledge to work together and jointly administer the local councils under their control. It is popularly believed that Opposition alliances formed in a hurry for expediency usually do not last long, but there have been instances where they worked, the 2015 regime change being a case in point.

Going by the outcomes of the general elections during the past several decades, Sri Lanka has shown signs of returning to alternate power shifts, which characterised electoral politics prior to 1977. This trend has become more manifest since 2015. Gone are the days when political parties had solid vote bases. Floating voters now hold greater sway than in the past and have determined the outcomes of elections, especially in 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2024 and 2025.

The NPP has won elections by attracting the swing voters who previously backed the UNF and the SLPP in 2015 and 2019/20, respectively. But there is no guarantee that the NPP will be able to retain their support in future elections. A significant drop in its national vote share in last month’s LG polls indicates that the NPP has alienated a considerable number of floating voters owing to unfulfilled promises, anti-incumbency sentiments, and serious allegations against some of its leaders.

Signs are that the deepening acrimony between the NPP government and the Opposition in Parliament will percolate down to the local councils, further complicating their administration. Ordinary people will be the losers.

Saturday 14th June, 2025

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is reported to have said, quoting the Attorney General’s (AG’s) Department that the questionable reduction of the special commodity levy (SCL) on imported sugar in 2020, during the SLPP government, did not amount to a criminal offence. The AG’s Department has reportedly directed the CID to conduct further investigations to find out whether anyone gained undue benefits from the duty reduction. Why the probe dragged on for years is the question. There was ample time for the suspects to cover their tracks.

The CID has belaboured the obvious. The SCL reduction per se was not an offence—criminal or otherwise. The Cabinet of Minister has the authority and discretion to increase or decrease SCLs. What is really at issue is the economic fallout of the SCL decrease in question and the undue benefits that accrued therefrom to a few sugar importers connected to the SLPP government.

One can only hope that the CID and the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption will conduct a thorough probe into what has come to be dubbed the sugar scam, which was one of the issues the NPP flogged very hard during its election campaigns.

The CID and the national anti-graft commission have not been free from political pressure. So, it is possible that the present-day rulers do not want a precedent created with the SCL reduction at issue being deemed a punishable offence, for they themselves stand accused of having manipulated import duties for the sake of its cronies among big-time rice millers.

What the critics of the SCL reduction have said is that the SLPP government adopted that measure after ensuring that all sugar importers, except its financiers among them, had replenished their stocks and could not take delivery of any more shipments of sugar. When it slashed the SCL on sugar imports from Rs. 50 to 25 cents a kilo, its cronies had placed orders for sugar and/or some of their shipments were on their way to Colombo. The SCL was a well calculated move that stood the SLPP financiers in good stead at the expense of the state coffers; it is believed that among the beneficiaries of the questionable SLC reduction were those who sponsored the propaganda events held by the SLPP ahead of the 2019 presidential election.

It will not be difficult for the CID to figure out who actually benefited from the SLC reduction. All it will have to do is to ascertain information about the sugar importers who placed orders immediately before the slashing of the SLC and about those whose shipments were reaching the Colombo Port when the SCL decrease was announced.

The SLPP government made the SLC decrease out to be a move intended to bring the sugar prices down for the benefit of the public, but Basil Rajapaksa himself admitted in a television interview that the sugar prices had not come down. The CID should also find out what the sugar prices were before and after the SLC reduction. It has been reported in the newspapers that the sugar prices did not drop despite the decrease in the SCL because most of the sugar importers had purchased sugar prior to the SLC reduction and did not want to adjust prices and suffer losses. The government craftily served the interests of the sugar importers, including its financiers by allowing the sugar prices to be kept at the previous level while its cronies were maximizing profits at the expense of the public and the economy. Such politically-motived moves made a huge contribution to the country’s worst-ever economic crisis, and they must be probed thoroughly and the culprits brought to justice.