A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Why should only Ravi resign? Ministers Kabir and Malik?
The State prosecutors who questioned Ravi Karunanayake went beyond their mandate, dragging in personal issues to make the Foreign Minister uncomfortable and to sensationalise the entire proceedings. Very similar to the infamous Batalanda prosecution in the 90s; there were a lot of similarities.
Unfortunately the Foreign Minister responded to the questioning like a kindergarten child. Ravi
Karunanayake is an accountant by profession. Surely, he could have
responded to those questions more professionally. The lawyer who advised
him needs his head examined. Moreover he could have conducted his
private business in such a way that he would have not got his family
humiliated and dragged into controversy and ridicule like this.
In
the first place Ravi Karunanayake was not the Minister in Charge of the
Central Bank. The Prime Minister is the Minister of Economic Affairs
and his Deputy at that time was Dr. Harsha de Silva. Both are not
pushovers, they know the subject matter. Why have they not been
questioned so far?
The Ministers named in the controversy going through the Commission
reports are Ministers Karunanayake, Malik Samarawickrama and Kabir
Hashim. How Minister Hashim who has nothing to do with the economy in
2015 got dragged into the CB bond controversy only he would know. What
was Samarawickrama who has nothing to do with the Central Bank doing in
the Central Bank dealing room on that day? When will the prosecution
question them?
But what we now suspect is that none of them (Ministers) knew how a
primary dealer makes money from turning a bond around and as a result
they were all taken for a good ride by young Arjun Aloysius. They were
then forced to do things by the young man to cover their tracks
resulting in more losses to the State.
It
is also interesting to find out who authorised BOC to arrange a credit
line of Rs. 10 billion in a record 10 minutes to Perpetual Treasures. At
that time the State banks came under Minister Ravi Karunanayake.
Therefore who gave the order to the BOC Chairman? Therefore
the Commissioners, who have very little real knowledge as to what
financial engineering really is, should instead of turning the
proceedings into a circus, make a genuine attempt to manage the
investigations in a dignified manner without making it a public circus.
Ironically, the Joint Opposition (JO) Members of Parliament by filing a
‘No Confidence’ motion even before the report is made public is clear
indication that they are trying move the attention away from the
Rajapaksa family investigations which are now near completion. Most of
them who are serving bail on corruption charges are using the bond
debacle to cover up their sins through Minister Karunanayake. The
Sirisena Government is happily walking into the JO stage-managed trap
without taking stock of the real situation in the country. Once again
political naivety on the part of President Sirisena and his Government.
Sources say it will take around one month to compile the report and also
for the full transcript to be made public because it will require the
agreement of the lawyers representing both parties. So
why the indecent hurry for the Government to prosecute their
frontrunner Karunanayake, when 90% of the investigations Sirisena
promised in 2015 have not even led to one high profile person getting
prosecuted? This is a clear indication of the sorry state of affairs in
the Government.
In the final analysis, what is so surprising is that while the Bond
Commission has been decisive and brutal in its questioning, the State
prosecutors have done very little so far to fast-track many of the
high-profile financial scandals involving the NSB, ETF, EPF and SLIC,
money during Nivard Cabral’s tenure and Rupa Dheerasinge’s tenure as EPF
Superintendent and her subsequent promotion as Assistant Governor. Her
husband Dharma Dheerasinghe still continues to be Chairman despite his
controversial appointment to a private bank board in 2011 by Nivard
Cabral. Arjun Aloysius has surely had a hand in all those EPF
transactions.
The
fact that the FCID and the Serious Crimes Division and the SEC have
done nothing to prosecute the white collar criminals of the past regime
is a direct indictment on the President and the Prime Minister. It seems
the fall guy for the Government’s incompetence is now Minister Ravi
Karunanayake. But surely the man is not going down without a good fight?