Future UNP govt. to probe misuse of public property since 1948 

by Zacki Jabbar-January 27, 2014, 10:09 pm

The misuse of public property and funds since Independence would be probed by a future UNP government, General Secretary of the party Tissa Attanayake said yesterday.

Accepting the challenge thrown at the UNP by the JVP’s Lal Kantha, he told a news conference in Colombo that as a party which extended its fullest support to enact the 17th Amendment to the Constitution which established all the Independent Commissions including the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), it would not shy away from its national responsibilities. "Our answer to the JVP and Lal Kantha is ‘Yes’, a future UNP administration will not hesitate to investigate concrete allegations presented against anyone who had robbed the country’s resources since 1948. It was due to our commitment to good governance that we voted for the establishment of the 17th Amendment in 1994," Attanayake said.

He expressed concern about the Chairman of the Bribery and Corruption Commission who had to investigate hundreds of complaints against Government Ministers and MPs, being harassed."How can the Chairman do his job, when all sorts of allegations are being leveled against him? That is why we have been agitating for the 17th Amendment to be revived."

Attanayake said that the former Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake had been impeached on allegations of bribery and corruption, but similar accusations against ruling party politicians were investigated.

Corruption in the Rajapaksa regime was unprecedented, MP Attanayake said. A classic example was that three square metres of the Katunayake-Colombo Expressway had cost Rs.1.7 million. It was a national crime for which the people and not the rulers would have to pay, he noted.

Electricity prices had been jacked up at frequent intervals due to the massive losses suffered by the Ceylon Electricity Board, resulting from incompetence and implementation of short sighted policies. Here, too, no one had been held accountable for their sins, he observed.