Friday 4th October, 2024

Much is being spoken these days about the need to eliminate corruption, which has eaten into the vitals of Sri Lankan society. However, clean governance has been reduced to a mere political slogan in this country, and the corrupt continue to go places. While Sri Lanka is paying lip service to the task of ridding itself of corruption, former Singapore Minister S. Iswaran has been sentenced to one year in jail for receiving gifts worth USD 300,000 and obstructing justice while in office.

Charges against Iswaran included accepting expensive gifts such as tickets to English Premier League football matches, the Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix, London musicals and a private jet ride. If Sri Lankan politicians were to be prosecuted for such offences, most of them would be behind bars. The new government of Sri Lanka has taken moral high ground and is making a public display of what it calls its commitment to eliminating bribery and corruption. It has received praise from foreign diplomats for its anti-corruption drive, but its leaders are among the politicians who have received undeclared funds.

Iswaran, who held several key Cabinet portfolios, such as transport, communications and trade, had to resign as a minister last year, when his transgressions came to light. He initially protested his innocence, saying that he would fight to clear his name, but subsequently he pleaded guilty to five charges.

The Singapore court rejected Iswaran’s plea for leniency. Presiding Judge Vincent Hoong is reported to have said: “Trust and confidence in public institutions are the bedrock of effective governance, which could all too easily be undermined by the appearance that an individual public servant has fallen below the standards of integrity and accountability.” The classification of a minister as a public servant is of interest. Sri Lanka’s new government should seriously consider having Judge Hoong’s obiter dictum prominently displayed at all state institutions, here.

What basically made Singapore’s quantum leap from the ‘Third World’ to the ‘First World’ possible was its successful war on bribery and corruption under the unwavering leadership of Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), who also restored the rule of law. Clean governance has enabled the city state to retain its No 2 spot on the World Bank rankings for ease of doing business.

In a previous editorial comment on the arrest of Iswaran, we pointed out what LKY had said about ministers and officials in this part of the world. In his widely read book, From Third World to First, he has said: “The higher they are, the bigger their homes and more numerous their wives, concubines, or mistresses, all bedecked in jewelry appropriate to the power and position of their men. Singaporeans who do business in these countries have to take care not to bring home such practices.” When one sees Sri Lankan politicians and bureaucrats enriching themselves and living the life of Riley with impunity, one remembers LKY’s memorable words.

All Singaporean politicians who did not heed LKY’s aforesaid warning were severely dealt with. The fate that befell Teh Cheang Wan, the Minister for National Development, is a case in point. When the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau launched a probe into an allegation of bribery against him in the mid-1980s, he sought to meet LKY, who refused to see him until the investigation was over.

Wan took his life, and his suicide note said, inter alia, “As an honourable oriental gentleman I feel it is only right that I should pay the highest penalty for my mistake.” If the Sri Lankan ministers had received the same treatment as Wan from their leaders, most of them would have been pushing up the daisies by now, and the vital sectors such as health, education, finance, agriculture and trade and commerce would have been free from corruption, and, above all, fake and substandard drugs would not have snuffed out so many lives in the state-run hospitals.

Now that Singapore has set an example to other countries by throwing Iswaran behind bars, will it extradite one of its citizens, Arjuna Mahendran, to Sri Lanka to stand trial for his involvement in the Treasury bond scams carried out on his watch as the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka? Singapore should help other nations fight corruption, shouldn’t it?

Minister of Public Security Vijitha Herath has said the new government will do everything in its power to have Mahendran extradited. Let him be urged to ensure that the Attorney General’s Department makes a formal request to the government of Singapore to that effect, again.

Thursday 3rd October, 2024

More than half a decade has elapsed since the Easter Sunday terror attacks (2019), which claimed about 270 lives and left hundreds of others with permanent injuries, but the survivors of terror, the family members of the deceased, the Catholic Church, civil society organisations and others are still crying out for justice. Sri Lanka has had four Presidents since the carnage that shook the world—Maithripala Sirisena, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and Anura Kumara Dissanayake––but, sadly, justice remains far from served.

Spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Colombo Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando has revealed the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday attacks. Speaking at a discussion on Sunanda Deshapirya’s book about the Easter Sunday carnage, on Tuesday, at the BMICH, the prelate declared that the terror mastermind was the person who had identified himself as Abu Hind.

Whenever National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) leader Zahran Hashim spoke with Abu Hind over the telephone, he ensured that everyone else was out of earshot, according to his wife Hadiya’s testimony before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (COI) which probed the Easter Sunday attacks, Fr. Fernando said, noting that when the then SDIG in charge of the CID, Ravi Seneviratne sought to reveal who Abu Hind actually was, while testifying before the COI, he was asked not to do so; a commissioner jotted down a name on a piece of paper and passed it on to Seneviratne, asking whether it was the person the latter was referring to, and Seneviratne answered in the affirmative. One wonders why the COI prevented the true identity of Abu Hind being revealed then and there. Intriguingly, the COI final report says: “The CID investigators who testified before the COI informed that they are investigating the identity of Abu Hind. Those investigations should proceed (p 222).” If it is true that the SDIG of the CID had tried to reveal the real identity of Abu Hind, then one can ask why the COI has, in its final report, asked the CID to conduct a fresh probe. Interestingly, in March 2021, the then Attorney General Dappula de Livera instructed IGP C. D. Wickramaratne to conduct a thorough investigation in respect of Abu Hind, Ahamed Thalib Lukman Thalib, his son Lukman Thalib Ahamed aka ‘Abu Abdulla,’ Rimsan and Mahendran Pulasthini alias ‘Sara.’ They have been named in the COI report, under the Chapter, ‘Foreign Involvement’. There would have been no need for further efforts to identify Abu Hind if the CID had already done so while the COI proceedings were in progress.

The fact that Abu Hind was Zahran’s handler and masterminded the Easter Sunday attacks has been known since the submission of the final report of the COI to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in February 2021. We, too, have editorially pointed out that the terror mastermind is Zahran’s handler although the Gotabaya government insisted that Naufer Moulavi had masterminded the terror attacks. In May 2021, the then Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekera told Parliament that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had identified Naufer as the Easter Sunday terror mastermind. Claims made by outfits such as the FBI cannot be taken seriously owing to the allegation that there was a foreign involvement in the Easter Sunday carnage. Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, who was the Justice Minister in the Yahapalana government, has, in a recent television interview, attributed the Easter Sunday attacks to some geostrategic issues that the handover of the Hambantota Port to China gave rise to.

Fr. Fernando also said in his aforesaid speech that the military intelligence had been in touch with Jamil, an NTJ bomber, who was asked by a mysterious caller not to blow himself at Taj Samudra. While Jamil was behaving in a suspicious manner at a mosque in Dehiwala, after abandoning the Taj Samudra mission, he was questioned by a security officer, and he claimed that he was upset over a domestic issue. He gave the security guard his wife’s telephone number, asking the latter to check the veracity of his claim. The guard called Jamil’s wife, and a little while later a military intelligence operative used her phone to call him, according to Fr. Fernando, who said it was proof that the military intelligence had communicated with the bomber until he blew himself up in a guesthouse in Dehiwala on 21 April 2019.

Fr. Fernando also alleged that a truck travelling from Katunayake to Panadura had been stopped by the police near Gelanigama, but the OIC of the police station in the area had asked them to release the vehicle forthwith, and according to a log entry made by a police sergeant, the OIC had acted on instructions given by SDIG Deshabandu Tennakoon. That truck may have carried explosives and had it been checked, the Easter Sunday tragedy could have been prevented, the prelate said.

There are different narratives about the mastermind/s behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks. It is claimed in some quarters that the carnage was carried out to facilitate Gotabaya’s ascension to the presidency, but there is another school of thought, according to which there was a foreign hand in the terrorist bombings. The witnesses who expressly testified that there had been ‘an external hand or conspiracy behind the attacks’, according to the COI report, are Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, former President Maithripala Sirisena, former Minister Rauf Hakeem, former Minister Rishad Bathiudeen, former Governor Azath Salley, former SJB MP Mujibur Rahman, former SIS Director SDIG Nilantha Jayawardena, former STF Commandant M. R. Lateef, former Chief of Defence Staff Ravindra Wijegunaratne, former SDIG CID Ravi Seneviratne and former CID Director Shani Abeysekera.

Is Abu Hind Sri Lankan or foreign? An international expert on terrorism is quoted by the COI, in its final report, as having said: “Abu Hind was a character created by a section of a provincial Indian intelligence apparatus. The intelligence that the Director SIS received on 4th, 20th and 21st April 2019 was from this operation and the intelligence operative pretending to be one Abu Hind. Operatives of this outfit operate on social media pretending to be Islamic State figures. They are trained to run virtual personae (p 219).”

In trying to solve the Easter Sunday carnage mastermind puzzle, let’s apply the Occam’s razor method, which means that when there are two competing ideas, the simpler one should be chosen. Now that the Catholic Church has said in no uncertain terms that the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks is the person who used nom de guerre, Abu Hind, and current Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security, SDIG (retd) Seneviratne and the members of the COI have been aware of his true identity, further probes to ascertain the true identity of the terror mastermind will be redundant.

‘Abu Hind’ must be arrested, interrogated and prosecuted forthwith if he is a Sri Lankan, and if he is a foreign national, as the aforesaid international expert told the COI, assistance of Interpol and the country where the suspect is residing must be sought to bring him to justice.

Wednesday 2nd October, 2024

The monthly petroleum price revision has been effected, and the prices of petrol, diesel and kerosene have been reduced. The price of a litre of 92 Octane petrol has been reduced by Rs. 21 to Rs. 311. The prices of ‘auto’ diesel and ‘super’ diesel have been decreased by Rs. 24 and Rs. 33 per litre to Rs. 283 and 319, respectively. The price of a litre of kerosene has been reduced by Rs. 19 to Rs. 183. The price of 95 Octane petrol remains unchanged. These price reductions may be larger than those implemented by the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government, but they fall far short of what the NPP promised before the recently concluded presidential election. The NPP leaders including the then presidential candidate, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, tore into the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government for keeping the petroleum prices extremely high by imposing taxes amounting to more than Rs. 150 on petrol and diesel per litre. No sooner had Dissanayake won the presidency than he came under pressure from his political opponents to reduce petroleum prices by at least Rs. 150 per litre.

Thankfully, the NPP has chosen to act wisely. It has not made the same mistakes as the Yahapalana government and the SLPP administration; the regime changes in 2015 and 2019 led to huge decreases in fuel prices, which took their toll on state revenue.

If the NPP government had slashed the fuel prices in keeping with its pre-election rhetoric, its action would have stood in the way of the efforts being made to raise state revenue as part of the country’s economic recovery programme. Reflected in the latest fuel price revision is the fact that the sobering economic reality has already dawned on President Dissanayake and his Cabinet. This is something positive.

The NPP leaders have not sought to translate their campaign rhetoric into action. They have chosen to tread cautiously although the Opposition is raking them over the coals for not making good on their election promises. Cabinet Spokesman Vijitha Herath told the media yesterday that the new government had to reduce fuel prices in a sustainable manner, and more relief could be given to the people as the economy improved.

It is heartening that the NPP leaders have not pandered to their party’s dyed-in-the-wool members who are calling for the ouster of some efficient state officials in key positions, and demanding populist measures to rally more popular support. They also seem to have opted to strike a fine balance between the ongoing economic recovery programme and the provision of economic relief. That is the way to set about the task of managing the economy. They have to cross the river by feeling the stones, as legendary Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously said.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has, in view of the upcoming general election, suspended the implementation of the fertiliser and fuel subsidies President Dissanayake ordered the Finance Ministry to grant farmers and fishers, respectively. Subsidies help lower the cost of production, if properly implemented, and there is no gainsaying that the farming community, as well as others, deserve relief, but there is a pressing need to rationalise all subsidy schemes and ensure that the intended benefits thereof accrue to the public.

Private bus operators have decided to share the benefits of the fuel price reductions with the public; they have agreed to a downward bus fare revision. But trishaw operators have refused to do so; they are demanding a bigger petrol price reduction! Ironically, most of them threw their weight behind the NPP in the presidential contest, displaying posters of Dissanayake on their vehicles. They are now refusing to help the NPP government ease the people’s economic burden. So much for their much-advertised progressive outlook and their campaign for social justice.

What the reaction of the trishaw operators signifies is that most of those who made the NPP’s ascension to power possible may not fully cooperate with the new administration to usher in the change they passionately clamoured for if they feel that their interests are threatened. They want others to bring about that change while they are busy serving self-interest.