Conspiracies redux

Saturday 6th November, 2021

Tragic as Sri Lanka’s situation is, conspiracy theories that politicians come out with all too often remind us of Shakespeare’s comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, wherein Theseus says thus of the people ruled by unbridled imagination: ‘Or in the night, imagining some fear/How easy is a bush supposed a bear!’ It looks as if the government and the Opposition were vying with each other to concoct conspiracy theories. Hardly a day passes without a politician complaining of a conspiracy. The government would have the public believe that the present unholy mess it has created thanks to its colossal blunders on every front is due to conspiracies. Not to be outdone, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa himself has complained of a conspiracy against him.

Former UNP MP Palitha Range Bandara has, all of a sudden, called for a fresh probe into a claim made during the yahapalana government that there was a conspiracy to kill the then President Maithripala Sirisena, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Sirisena made a real hullabaloo over it; probes were conducted and arrests made, but nothing came of the much-publicised investigations, which have since been relegated to limbo to all intents and purposes. Why does the UNP want the forgotten investigation reopened at this juncture, when the focus of the country should be on serious existential problems and challenges it is faced with, and nothing else? However, the UNP has asked a valid question; why has neither Sirisena nor his successor Rajapaksa cared to have the so-called conspiracy probed?

Time was when Sirisena apparently thought others were without anything important to do and busy plotting full-time to harm him. In October 2018, Sirisena, while being the President, made quite a stir by reportedly claiming at a Cabinet meeting that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was conspiring to kill him. Whether RAW really sought to eliminate him, one may not know, but it must have felt like doing so, after the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, which India allegedly helped form to further its interests, allowed the Port City to be built bigger, and handed over the Hambantota Port to China on a 99-year lease. Spy agencies sin so much that they are usually more sinned against than sinning, one may say with apologies to Shakespeare.

The UNP itself has complained of many conspiracies. In late 2001, it accused the army intelligence of planning to kill its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, who contested the general election in that year as its prime ministerial candidate. Its baseless claim and hostile actions based thereon against the army, and the disastrous consequences thereof stood the LTTE in good stead. One may recall that the UNP, immediately after forming a government in 2001, had a safehouse of army long rangers, at the Millennium City, Athurugiriya, raided and the intelligence operatives operating therefrom arrested, exposing their identities. The LTTE ascertained information about the army’s deep penetration operations following the raid and eliminated the long rangers’ intelligence network in the North and the East and killed several intelligence officers. In January 2015, the UNP claimed that the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa had tried to stay in power forcibly despite his defeat in the presidential race, but it did not care to conduct a probe for five years.

Sirisena, who made an issue of the aforesaid conspiracy to kill him and had arrests made, gave a presidential pardon to a former Tiger accused of having tried to assassinate him while he was a minister in the Rajapaksa government. It is claimed in some quarters that the arrest of intelligence officers over the alleged conspiracy disrupted and weakened the state intelligence apparatus much to the benefit of the National Thowheed Jamaath, which carried out the Easter Sunday attacks.

One may not be in a position either to verify or to rubbish the claims that there were conspiracies to eliminate the political leaders including Sirisena, but it is clear that the LTTE was bent on killing them all. Luckily for them, the war was brought to an end in 2009. But about 12 years on, Prabhakaran would turn in his grave, regretting that he ever plotted to kill the current Sri Lankan leaders of all political hues, if he knew their tremendous contribution to the ruination of the country, which is exactly what he strove to achieve for about 25 years without much success.