Bimal Rathnayake addressing the meeting
The present political deadlock in Sri Lanka is the direct result of President Maithripala Sirisena’s power hungry attempts for his own political survival ensuring his victory at the 2020 presidential elections, said JVP Chief National Organiser Bimal Rathnayake addressing a meeting in Toronto on October 29.
The top Janatha Vimukthi Perumuna official who is also an MP was visiting North America along with several other Sri Lankan parliamentarians on the invitation of Canadian and US governments.
“Unlike former presidents Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapakse, Sirisena did not earn his position as country’s chief executive. He came to power indirectly without much hassle on a wave of protest votes by the people who were unhappy with the way things were happening under Rajapakse’s rule,” he added.
After becoming the president, Sirisena did not use his executive powers in a productive manner to develop the country and turned his back against the mandate given by the people at the presidential elections in 2015. “He did not do anything useful for the nation except for a few ‘pet subjects’ like banning women from buying liquor and halting the removal of two elephants from Sinharaja Forest.”
Sirisena is a lame duck president very much like Mikhail Gorbachev after the collapse of Soviet Union, remaining as president only by name. “Sirisena could have gone ahead with investigations into malpractices during Rajapakse regime to win people’s support overruling Ranil Wickremesinghe’s lethargic attitude in this respect, but he chose to turn a blind eye for the sake of his own survival. Initially, Sirisena was even scared to talk about the massive Central Bank bond scandal.”
Rathnayake said that Wickremesinghe was only interested in divide and rule policy without using his power to develop the country, also selling national assets to foreign countries. “When SLFP is divided it ensures Wickremesinghe’s survival. He failed to take action against corruption charges of Rajapakses except for showing some half-hearted interest in Gotabhaya. Wickremesinghe protected thieves for his own survival. If Mahinda was sent to jail most of the SLFP MPs would have joined Sirisena, weakening the power base of the unity government. Wickremesinghe’s strategy was to strengthen Rajapakse to fight Sirisena. To achieve this end he ignored charges levelled against the former strongman and his family members.”
Ratnayake further added: “When the JVP discussed the bond scam with Sirisena he asked us to go ahead with the revelations as he seemed apprehensive of talking about it publicly. It was our MP Sunil Handunnetti who revealed the frightening details of the massive scam in the parliament. Sirisena was fully aware of the damage caused by this scam to the economy from the beginning and if he took early action the government could have stopped Arjuna Mahendran from fleeing the country to escape legal action.”
Talking further about the brewing crisis, Rathnayke said Sirisena has no constitutional right to appoint a prime minister under Amendment 19 of the constitution. “He appointed Wickremesinghe as the prime minister who had a lesser number of seats than SLFP’s D.M. Jayarathne because the president had the power to do so under Amendment 20. But after the introduction of Amendment 19 the power to appoint a prime minister solely rests with the parliament.”
Rathnayake hopes that the current crisis won’t spiral out of control giving a free hand to outside forces to interfere in nation’s domestic affairs. “UN and the diaspora must be closely monitoring what’s happening now. On several occasions we have escaped tough UN actions narrowly and any international moves like sanctions at this moment will totally destroy our already-crippled economy. Once when we were in Geneva a high UN official from Switzerland told us that she did not know any other war-ravaged country in the world that recovered quickly and rebuilt the county faster than Sri Lanka. On another occasion a former judge of the International Court of Justice who was about to set up a tribunal to probe into rights allegations of the country, questioned us ‘how can a Tamil mother seeking justice over a missing son can expect government’s attention when your own chief justice – Shirani Bandaranayke – was summarily dismissed within a day?’. On another occasion when UN wanted to impose tough measures against Sri Lanka minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told the meeting that Sri Lanka has Asia’s oldest legal system and ‘we have the capacity to attend to the rights violations in our own country’. On another occasion the government arrested Pilleyan, former chief minister of the Eastern Province, to show the UN that the country was serious about taking action against rights violations.”
The worst human rights violations were recorded in Sri Lanka after 2010, after the end of hostilities, Rathnayake added.
Answering a question from the audience why the JVP has not so far been able to produce a presidential candidate with a winning formula, he said his party is small with about 7-8 lakh of supporters. “We have a short cut to political success if we align with a major party but at the moment we are concentrating on a more pragmatic approach. Sirisena came to power in 2015 with lot of support from nation’s intellectuals, leading businessmen, technocrats, artistes, religious leaders and also from the people who were genuinely concerned about the future progress of the country. This group belonged to the floating voter block comprising about 25 – 30 lakhs.”
The JVP is trying to muster support from these groups and as an initial move the party has prepared a manifesto of policies covering ten major fields in the country. “We are coordinating with a panel of 250 intellectuals, technocrats, administrators, artistes and other experts to formulate a set of policies to develop the country. We are having meetings in all the 25 districts to tell the people what we are hoping to do. With these pragmatic policies we hope to obtain about 20-25 per cent of votes at the next parliamentary elections.”
Rathnayake seeks the help of the Sri Lankans living abroad. “You are doing very well here without any kind of problems your relatives are facing in your native country. Help them in this hour of need and talk to them about what best they can do to get rid of corrupt political parties that have betrayed people during the last seven decades. A parliamentary committee is at the moment looking into give voting rights to Sri Lankans living abroad. If approved, it will be an important landmark in our history because without your help we cannot develop the nation.” (Report and pictures: www.newstrails.com)
