Use of armed forces and downright hypocrisy
Posted on August 22nd, 2018
Ananda Chandrapala.
Two of the most widely used weapons by the Yahapalana government were the misuse of armed forces and the state funds to topple the previous regime.
The JVP was in the forefront to give their full support to the Yahapalana government to establish these facts particularly in rural areas where they had a strong control in those areas at that time.
Alleged misuse of armed forces was aimed at the then Secretary to the Ministry of Defence Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to defame him who played a key role in winning the war against the LTTE.
Alleged misuse of State funds was aimed at the former president to negate his role in winning the war.But immediately after the Yahapalana Government came in to power both these weapons boomeranged back to them.
No less a person than the Prim Minister himself Ranil Wickremasinghe, Ministers Malik Smarawickrama, Ravi Karunanayake and the Central bank Governor Arjun Mahendran were directly involved in the Central Bank bond fraud which denied the government billions of funds and the extent of the loss is still unfathomed.
So far they have not been able come out with any concrete proof of misusing state funds by the former president.
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was vehemently criticised for using the armed forces in construction work aimed at beautifying the Colombo city.
When they were doing it even the tourists praised that the Colombo is becoming one of the beautiful cities in Asia.
Now when you take a walk around Colombo you will find that it is the other way round. That beauty is completely gone.
Quite contrarily the present president Maithreepala Sirisena himself is making the liberal use of armed forces to renovate the tanks and roads in dry zone areas.
He has publicly appreciated their work and the very low cost involved to the government in doing so. If this is not downright hypocrisy what can you call it.
At the same time I wonder why the opposition is ignorant of this fact and not making use of it to critique the Yahapalana Government.