Editorial
Power of Five
Saturday 17th October, 2020
It is being argued in some quarters that the Easter Sunday carnage could have been averted if the police had been given clear orders to arrest Zahran when a foreign intelligence agency warned of the impending terror strikes. But the long arm of the law has not been able to arrest even Opposition MP Rishad Bathiudeen despite an order from the Attorney General himself. The Colombo Magistrate’s Court has also said he can be arrested without a warrant, given the severity of charges against him. How can it be claimed that the police, who cannot even arrest Bathiudeen, would have been able to bust an elusive terror outfit, whose leader, also had political connections? The Directorate of Military Intelligence has confirmed, according to former Army Commander Mahesh Senanayake, that in 2018 the then yahapalana Minister Bathiudeen’s brother, Riyaj, helped Zahran flee to India by boat. The CID says there is no evidence to prove that Riyaj had links to Zahran’s National Thowheed Jamaath!
The SLPP sought mandates before the presidential and parliamentary elections to restore the rule of law and safeguard national security, among other things. But the police under its watch cannot arrest even an Opposition politician with serious charges against him and those with terror charges are let off the hook.
Those who voted for the SLPP overwhelmingly in the hope that it would take stern action against those responsible for collaborating with terrorists, destroying forests and abusing public funds are disillusioned. The rogues of the previous dispensation, save a few, have gone scot-free for all practical purposes. The incumbent government, like its predecessors, is using the carrot-and-stick method to make the Opposition MPs switch their allegiance. Those who cannot be bought off are frightened into backing the government. Following the change of government, in Jan. 2015, the yahapalana government employed this method successfully to raise a majority in Parliament. A large number of rogues in the Rajapaksa government, who should have been thrown behind bars, got away with their crimes by joining forces with the yahapalana administration, which gave them a choice between accepting ministerial posts and being hounded by the CID and the FCID.
Police Spokesmen’s noses grow discernibly when they answer questions from journalists on the inordinate delay on the part of the police to arrest politically-connected suspects. The incumbent one also trots out lame excuses for their failure to arrest Bathiudeen. We, however, do not blame him. Who wants to tell the truth and be packed off to Kankesanthurai?
The All Ceylon Makkal Congress led by Bathiudeen has five MPs, and they are apparently as powerful as the parliamentary group consisting of 150 MPs, for the police have baulked at arresting Bathiudeen, known for political deal-making. Where are those one hundred SLPP MPs who wrote to the President and the Prime Minister a much-publicised letter, recently, protesting against the release of Bathiudeen’s brother who, the CID said, had aided and abetted Zahran and other NTJ terrorists?
Since the change of government in Nov. 2019, there have been several instances where the CID chose not to carry out arrest warrants or the AG’s orders. Among those they refrained from arresting are Kurunegala Mayor Thushara Sanjeewa, Negombo Prison Chief Anuruddha Sampayo, former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake and Perpetual Treasuries owner Arjun Aloysius. All suspects were allowed to evade arrest and surrender themselves either to the police or courts with their lawyers.
Bathiudeen had not been arrested at the time of going to press. One need not be surprised if he admits himself to a private hospital so that he will be arrested and granted bail before being discharged.
Editorial
Pledge to catch thieves: All bark and no bite?
Thursday 10th October, 2024
SLPP National Organiser and unsuccessful presidential candidate, Namal Rajapaksa, seems to believe that attack is the best form of defence. He has chosen to go on the offensive; he keeps daring the NPP to carry out its election pledge to bring back billions of dollars which, it said, the Rajapaksa family had stashed away in Uganda. He has offered to cooperate with the law enforcement authorities fully if an investigation gets underway! The NPP’s response to his challenge has been to make even more allegations against him and his family and obfuscate the issue.
Most systems in this country have been rigged to protect the corrupt in positions of power. Crooks at the levers of power can cover their tracks. One may recall that anti-corruption activists, the Opposition and the media had to fight quite a battle for months to have the then Minister Keheliya Rambukwella arrested and prosecuted for the procurement of fake and substandard medicinal drugs.
The best opportunity for the self-proclaimed anti-corruption activists to trace and recover Sri Lanka’s stolen funds presented itself after Maithripala Sirisena’s upset win in the 2015 presidential race. The UNP-led Yahapalana government, backed by the JVP, squandered that opportunity by conducting a series of show probes and show trials. The Rajapaksa regime had become a metaphor for corruption, and that was one of the main reasons why the people voted it out of power in 2015, but the politicisation of investigations into allegations of corruption made the Yahapalana anti-corruption drive fall short of its goal, and helped the Rajapaksa family play the victim, gain public sympathy and make a comeback. Worse, the Yahapalana government made a mockery of its commitment to good governance by carrying out the Treasury bond scams and various other rackets. The JVP backed that corrupt regime to the hilt.
The NPP heavyweights who have taken upon themselves the task of bringing the corrupt to justice and recovering the country’s stolen funds are all hat and no cattle, so to speak. During the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, the JVP/NPP made a public display of a slew of files, which numbered more than 400, claiming that they contained irrefutable evidence against those who had cut corrupt deals and amassed ill-gotten wealth. What has happened to those files is anybody’s guess.
In July 2024, the then President Ranil Wickremesinghe, during a function at the Presidential Secretariat, claimed that most of the files being exhibited by the JVP/NPP were empty and others contained photocopies of original documents, which, he said, were in his possession. Will the NPP government take action to obtain those documents from their erstwhile Yahapalana chum, Wickremesinghe? What one gathered from Wickremesinghe’s snide remark at issue was that the files the NPP was displaying had belonged to the Anti-Corruption Secretariat, which was set up at Temple Trees during the Yahapalana administration. How come those files have ended up in the hands of Wickremesinghe and Dissanayake?
Those who have mastered the art of helping themselves to public funds are adept at hiding their wealth. They use various fronts and shell companies for that purpose, as disclosed by Panama Papers and Pandora Papers. Efforts to disable the rogue global finance industry have so far met with limited success for many reasons, some of which being its sheer size and complexity, political influence, the absence of transparency and its remarkable adaptability. Public Security Minister Vijitha Herath has reportedly ordered a probe into revelations made by the Pandora Papers about some Sri Lankans. This is a welcome measure.
Efforts to trace Sri Lanka’s stolen funds and institute criminal proceedings against the corrupt who have enriched themselves at the expense of the public must go on, but equally important is the task of building robust mechanisms and introducing stringent laws to prevent corruption, and the next Parliament must carry it out as a national priority.
The public may not take Namal’s challenges to the NPP seriously, but having won last month’s presidential election basically on an anti-corruption platform, the NPP will have to make good on its solemn pledge to bring the corrupt to justice and recover the stolen funds. Gone are the days when bribes were carried in briefcases. Today, millions of dollars change hands electronically in faraway money laundering hubs. So, there is absolutely no need for anyone to transport loads of greenbacks in planes.
There is something the NPP government can do expeditiously to stop the barks of crooks. Instead of biting off more than it can chew in trying to nab the corrupt, it must order a fresh probe into the Airbus bribery scam. A British court revealed that Airbus had offered a huge bribe of USD 16 mn to the wife of a SriLankan executive to land a high-value contract here, and paid her USD 2 million initially. It is public knowledge that the person who accepted the bribe only acted as a collector. The NPP must find out who the real beneficiary of the Airbus backhander was. Will Namal dare the NPP to do so?
Editorial
Vital issues about victuals
Wednesday 9th October, 2024
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has met a group of food importers and discussed, inter alia, ways and means of making imported food items available to the public at affordable prices, according to media reports. He seems to think that discussions and moral suasion would help persuade the mudalali fraternity to refrain from profit maximisation for the sake of the public. If the government is really keen to serve the interests of the public, it should make a decisive intervention to tackle the problem of market cartelisation, which enables unscrupulous importers and wholesalers to jack up prices and exploit the public.
Egg prices have increased again after a temporary slump. Supporters of the new dispensation naively went so far as to attribute the egg price decrease to Dissanayake’s ascension to the presidency! What egg wholesalers with cold storage facilities did was to bring the egg prices down artificially so that they could buy eggs on the cheap and hoard them before increasing the selling prices. They have the best of both worlds while egg producers and consumers are gnashing their teeth.
Large-scale rice millers have offered to reduce the prices of rice. Never do they act out of altruism, and why have they become mindful of the maximum retail prices all of a sudden? It is not difficult to see through their game plan. They can afford to reduce prices temporarily but their small-scale counterparts cannot do so as they lack the wherewithal. If the prices of rice drop drastically, the small timers in the milling trade will go belly up; the rice market will be even less competitive in such an eventuality, and the Millers’ Mafia will be able to exploit the public to their heart’s content by increasing prices again.
Big-time millers leverage their wealth and political connections to deprive their smaller counterparts of funds for purchasing paddy by delaying bank loans, and fill their silos with paddy bought at lower prices. By the time the small-scale millers receive funds, there is hardly any paddy left for them to purchase and what is available is of inferior quality. This happens year in, year out.
Successive governments have done precious little to help the small-scale millers. The new government should ensure that funds are available for them to buy paddy when harvesting commences. The Paddy Marketing Board should be provided with funds and adequate storage facilities to compete with the Millers’ Mafia so that the farmer and the consumer will benefit. The JVP/NPP government is duty bound to do so because the JVP torched more than 240 agrarian service centres with paddy storage facilities in the late 1980s, according to Maithripala Sirisena, whom it helped become President in 2015.
The Millers’ Mafia employs another ruse to bring the prices of paddy down. It increases the prices of rice ahead of the harvesting season, compelling the government to import rice. When the state-owned warehouses are full with imported rice, the big-scale millers reduce prices, causing the imported rice stocks to rot as locally grown rice agrees with Sri Lankans’ palates more than the imported varieties. When the prices of rice fall, farmers have to sell their paddy at lower prices. After hoarding paddy, the crafty millers increase prices. Unsold imported rice stocks have to be disposed of as animal feed. The only way to end this despicable practice is to conduct raids and confiscate hoarded paddy. One can only hope that the JVP/NPP government will prove equal to the task of taking on the Millers’ Mafia.
Most people believed in the NPP’s pledges and rhetoric and voted for Dissanayake at last month’s presidential election. Having talked the talk—very eloquently at that––President Dissanayake now has to walk the walk. Unless the food importers and wholesalers stop exploiting the public, the government will have to get tough with them unlike the previous governments that chose to play ball with them for obvious reasons.
Wholesalers and importers of food and other essentials fleece the public with impunity thanks to their political links and slush funds, which help them have politicians eating out of their hands. Financiers’ interests take precedence over those of electors after elections.
There is a pressing need to ensure that politicians and their parties disclose the sources of funding so that the public will know who is in the pay of unscrupulous importers and traders. Let the SLPP, the UNP, the SJB, the NPP and other political parties be urged to reveal whether they have received any funds from such elements.
Editorial
Easter carnage probes and AKD’s call
Tuesday 8th October, 2024
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, addressing a group of Easter Sunday terror victims, their family members, Catholic priests including His Eminence Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, and others, at the Katuwapitiya Church, on Sunday, pledged to expedite investigations into the 2019 carnage and ensure that justice would be served fast. In saying so, he only repeated one of his election promises.
President Dissanayake should have addressed the specifics of some issues the Church had raised about the 2019 terror attacks, one being the fate that has befallen the reports of two vital probe committees appointed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe. Spokesman for the Colombo Archdiocese Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando, speaking at a discussion on the Easter Sunday terror attacks, recently, demanded to know what had become of the report of a committee President Wickremesinghe appointed to investigate some allegations that Channel 4 (UK) had levelled against Sri Lanka’s military intelligence in respect of the Easter bombings. The Church leaders should have requested President Dissanayake to make that report public.
What characterises the presidential probes in this country is lack of transparency on the part of the Presidents who order them. Committees and commissions are appointed to investigate issues of national importance, but not all their reports are released to the public, who have a right to know their findings. Sri Lankan Presidents have a remarkable ability to swallow committee reports whole!
Leader of Pivithuru Hela Urumaya Udaya Gammanpila, addressing the media yesterday called upon President Dissanayake to release the report of the committee appointed by President Wickremesinghe to investigate the Channel 4 allegation that Sri Lanka’s military intelligence was involved in the Easter Sunday attacks. Gammanpila also asked President Dissanayake to make public the report of the committee appointed by President Wickremesinghe to probe four specific issues concerning actions and responses of Sri Lanka’s military and intelligence officials in relation to the Easter Sunday bombings with special emphasis on the conduct of the head of the State Intelligence Service and the Chief of National Intelligence. That committee was headed by retired judge A. N. J de Alwis.
Gammanpila argued that on Sunday President Dissanayake would have been able to field questions from the victims of terror confidently at the Katuwapitiya Church and provided specific answers thereto if he had perused the aforesaid two reports, copies of which were available with Saman Ekanayake, who served as the Secretary to President Wickremesinghe, and the Attorney General. Whether President Dissanayake has read those reports, we do not know, but if he has not, it is high time he studied them and took action to make them accessible to the public.
There is no need to probe the Easter Sunday attacks all over again, and therefore it is hoped that no attempt will be made to reinvent the wheel. The Presidential Commission of Inquiry (COI) which investigated the 2019 carnage, has presented a corpus of information in its final report although it examined the alleged foreign involvement in the terror bombings perfunctorily. The COI findings could serve as the basis for a future investigation. If a new probe committee/commission seeks to begin from the beginning, investigations are likely to drag on until the cows come home. More than half a decade has already elapsed since the 2019 terror attacks.
The Catholic Church has said the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday carnage is the person who called himself ‘Abu Hind’ and his true identity is known to current Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security Ravi Seneviratne, and the members of the COI. Arresting the suspected terror mastermind will be half the battle in ascertaining who was actually behind the Easter Sunday carnage.
The Ministry of Public Security is now under Minister Vijitha Herath, who can ask Seneviratne, whom he handpicked as his ministry secretary, to reveal the true identity of Abu Hind, and President Dissanayake should make public the reports submitted by the Imam and Alwis committees.
Meanwhile, it is hoped that the NPP/JVP government, which has undertaken to have the Easter Sunday carnage probed thoroughly and serving justice expeditiously will not baulk at going the whole hog in view of the fact that Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim, father of two National Thowheed Jamath bombers, Mohamed Ibrahim Ilham Ahmed and Mohamed Ibrahim Insaf Ahmed, was a JVP National List nominee in the 2015 general election.
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