Release the report

Monday 22nd February, 2021

Efficiency may not be a trait Sri Lankan Presidents possess, but there is one thing they can do very efficiently, nay with great panache; it is swallowing presidential commission reports. Speculation is rife in political circles that the same fate has befallen the report submitted by the PCoI on the Easter Sunday carnage. It should have been made available to Parliament immediately after it was submitted to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith’s consternation is understandable. He has taken exception to the appointment of a six-member committee to study the facts and recommendations in the PCoI report. He has even questioned the eligibility of some of those entrusted with the task.

The Cardinal has struck a responsive chord with not only his flock but also all right-thinking Sri Lankans who have a right to know what revelations the PCoI has made, or whether there has been another bunglingly inept investigation. After all, they who bore the cost of the presidential commission inquiry have a right to information, which must be respected. What they demand to know is not any state secret, and the government has no right to keep the commission report under wraps. It is only natural that suspicion is being expressed in some quarters that the government is attempting a cover-up.

The Cardinal has asked the government to maintain transparency in handling the aforesaid commission report, and warned that he will be compelled to seek international assistance unless the culprits are brought to justice. He cannot be faulted for contemplating such a course of action. What else can he do? In the immediate aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks, he came forward to prevent a possible backlash and promised to ensure that the truth would be known and justice served. He acted commendably well, as a religious leader, and helped bring the situation under control. How can he explain to the families of the victims, most of whom were Catholics, his inability even to secure a copy of the commission report? There are also many others whose loved ones perished in the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks; they, too, have a right to know what really happened and who actually masterminded the carnage.

The SLPP turned the tables on the yahapalana government, in 2018, as can be seen from the last local government election results. But it was the latter’s bungling on the national security front and the resultant Easter Sunday carnage that gave the former’s anti-government campaign a turbo boost. The entire country came under a pall of uncertainty following the terror strikes, and the people’s fears stood the SLPP in good stead politically; Gotabaya presented himself as a messiah. It is no secret that the families of the Easter Sunday terror victims backed the SLPP at both presidential and parliamentary elections in the hope that the carnage would be properly probed, the truth made known and justice served. In fact, the SLPP undertook to do so. The government, therefore, has to live up to its promise.

The least the government can do to allay doubts and suspicions in the minds of people is to make the commission report public without further delay. It can appoint any number of committees to study facts and recommendations thereafter. If the commission report is kept secret indefinitely amidst protests it will be the government’s undoing.

The Cardinal’s love for Sri Lanka has never been in question. He defends the country at every forum and does his best to bring about religious amity and national reconciliation. His warning that he may have to seek international assistance would not have come at a worse time for the government, which is striving to defeat an attempt by the western bloc, at the UNHRC, to have an international probe launched into alleged war crimes here. Critics of Sri Lanka may ask, in Geneva, how advisable it is to leave the task of probing what allegedly happened during a fiercely fought war to a domestic investigative mechanism under a government which is under fire for concealing a presidential commission report on some peacetime terror attacks.