Shameless shirkers

Saturday 26th September, 2020

Cynics pooh-poohed the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority’s boastful claim that Sri Lanka was the Wonder of Asia. But we are convinced of the veracity of that slogan. In fact, this country is not just the Wonder of Asia’; it is the Wonder of the World, for it survived the yahapalana government without becoming a hotbed of ISIS terrorism.

On seeing the shameful conduct of the former rulers and their erstwhile trusted lieutenants, blaming one another for their collective failure to prevent the Easter Sunday carnage, people must be feeling ashamed that they were once ruled by those imbeciles. Under the yahapalana government, national security became nobody’s business and the Defence Ministry a playpen of politicians and mandarins who knew next to nothing about defence; they even did not know what to do with vital intelligence.

Hemasiri Fernando would have us believe that during his tenure as the Defence Secretary, the then President Maithripala Sirisena purposely kept him out of the loop, and, therefore, he should not be held responsible for the circumstances that led to the Easter Sunday carnage. He thinks the blame for the terror strikes should be laid solely on his former boss, Sirisena.

Ex-IGP Pujith Jayasundera says former President Sirisena should take the full responsibility for the yahapalana lapses that enabled the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) terrorists to carry out the Easter Sunday carnage. He insists that he had written to all those below him, informing them of the intelligence warning of the impending attacks, and they should have taken action. He pretends that he did not have full control over the police, and Sirisena interfered with transfers. But as far as we can remember, he controlled the police with an iron fist, and there was no way anyone could bypass him or conceal anything from him. It may be recalled that he ensured that his sil campaign was a success, and went so far as to rough up an elevator operator at the Police Headquarters for not observing sil. It is not possible that anyone would have dared ruffle his feathers. The blame for his subordinates’ failure to take action on the warning should be apportioned to him.

Jayasundera has said his phone was tapped by the SIS, and he was under surveillance while he was the IGP. We thought the yahapalana government did not resort to such measures. No wonder the state intelligence agencies, stuck neck deep in political work, had little time to spy on terrorists and ensure public safety.

SDIG Nilantha Jayawardena claims that, as the State Intelligence Service Chief, he had conveyed the intelligence warning of the terror attacks to everyone in the Defence establishment except President Sirisena. Curiouser and curiouser! It has now been revealed he used to call President Sirisena almost daily.

The entire yahapalana government and the police top brass who stooped so low as to do dirty political work should be held responsible for having created conditions for the rise of Islamic extremism and terror. Their witch hunt against the military and intelligence personnel who had been instrumental in defeating LTTE terrorism brought about a situation where nobody in the intelligence community was willing to go beyond the call of duty to neutralise the NTJ. Time was when intelligence officers sprang into action, upon receiving information about possible terror attacks, and dealt with the terrorists without wasting time on writing memos. If those brave, efficient officers and men, who served the country faithfully, risking as they did life and limb, had not been arrested, harassed or hounded out of their jobs, following the 2015 regime change, Zahran would not have been able to explode even the Kanthankudy motorcycle bomb, which was a dry run of the Easter Sunday bombings.

The yahapalana shirkers responsible for their failure to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks are lucky that they are not living in a country like Saudi Arabia, where a Sri Lankan girl—Rizana Nafeek—who worked as a housemaid was beheaded, in 2013, for the death of a baby, in her care, due to her negligence. Their lapses led to more than 250 deaths.