Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada

7 May 2017

Hon. Maithripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka
Presidential Secretariat
Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Hon. Ranil Wickremasinghe
Prime Minister of Sri Lanka
Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Cc. Hon Mangala Samaraweera,
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Colombo, SriLanka

Hon. Gayantha Karunatilake
Chief Government Whip
Minister of Mass Media and Parliamentary Reform
Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Honourable Gentlemen:

With your vindictive politics and your eagerness wanting to go after the former Rajapaksa Government, your Chief Government Whip telling the Parliament that Some Rajapaksa era DPLs were people smugglers” with an obnoxious pretence that the Yahapalanaya Government is ‘We are Holier than Thou”, with halos over our heads”, you opened a can of worms crawling out of the stinky Meethotamulla garbage heaps.

You accused the Rajapaksa era DPLs as ‘people smugglers’, and I say to you Even if they did, so what!”  I have been in Ottawa since 1970 and I can vouch for what I  say to you within the context of the Sri Lanka’s Mission in Ottawa.  This ‘people smuggling’ has been going on for donkey’s years, just not only by DPLs of the Rajapaksa era.  If your Chief Whip is speaking of the domestics who stay back after their Diplomat employer’s conclude the tour of duty, I have my doubts that, Later, they released those assistants in those countries to find other jobs there and they would not return home at the end of their assignments.”   Does your Government Whip know this as a fact?

Gentlemen ,this has been  an ongoing phenomenon for years and years and years, and not just a happening during the Rajapaksa era.   What your Chief Government Whip said was poppycock, and barrels full of jardi.  Unless you expect wanting  returning Diplomats violate the rights of their domestics, by  shackling them to a post at the residence at  Range Road in Ottawa, a week before they head to the airport and frog-march the domestics to the plane.  Will you three Honourable Gentlemen do it.  Na! I doubt it.  So you think you are going to use the Diplomats of the Rajapaksa era to get at the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his government.  That’s a lot of Meethotamulla garbage!  And heaps of it isn’t it!

Please inform your Chief Government Whip of the drill of what happens at the Sri Lankan Diplomats domestics who are brought to Canada.  These domestics are no fools.  They are alert and begin to understand and revel at the thought that they are in a pot of gold  that they are thrown into, once they begin to fall in love with  the green Cdn$20 bill that is worth about Rs.110 back home. And they begin to befriend Sri Lankans who stayed back as refugees during their off days from work.  And these domestics are given a course how to stay back and apply for  refugee status and being introduced to an Immigration lawyer when time comes to carry his  refugee claim forward legally.  And what is more lucrative is that the monthly welfare cheque they receive until they find work gives them much more value in rupees that they will  ever earn for a month working back at  home.

A few days prior to the day they are suppose to leave for Colombo with their diplomat employer, they disappear.  The diplomats wouldn’t have a clue of what they will be confronted with.  The Diplomats can do sweet nothing about it  other than  report to the police of the disappearance of their domestics, with the suspicion that they might want to stay back in Canada.  But, if your Government Chief Whip  points the finger at these Diplomats saying that the they take ‘kappan’ from the domestics for them to stay back, then let us hear more about it with the identity of the Diplomats.  If that is indeed true, then you can claim your right as the Yahapalanaya Government to penalize these Diplomats who become involved in ‘people smuggling’

But here is the rub gentlemen.  The worst culprits in such people smuggling” have been your past Ministers of Foreign Affairs, like Harold Herath, Tyrone Fernando and ACS Hameed.  They sent their ‘catchers’ to the  Ottawa Mission with the intention to give them a break to live in Canada happily ever after, by claiming to be refugees or whatever.  Some are lucky and others are hounded by the Immigration Border Police having failed their refugee claim and put them on a plane to arrive at Colombo’s Katunayake Airport 30 hours later.

One Foreign Minister’s ‘catcher’ who was sent as the Third Secretary, with the specific intention that he gets some specialist medical help for his child, got caught pilfering from Sears at St. Laurent Shopping Center. The husband pilfered men’s clothes and the wife pilfered some costume jewellery.  After the Minister Councillor at the Mission made a conscientious effort to keep the embarrassing episode hush..hush” from the public eye,  this Third Secretary  got exposure to his story from the local newspaper saying that he did not want to return home as he did not want to stop the excellent treatment his child was getting.  He wanted to stay back on humanitarian grounds.  The Ottawa Citizen carried the news item.

Another Foreign Minister loaded the Mission with his’ catchers’ and at one point  had 22 staff members at the Mission.  I am  not sure whether they had enough chairs to sit them all or whether they sat in style on Dumbara mats sucking on hookahs or stood at a corner of a room and sucked their thumbs not having any work to do.  I know most of this Foreign Minister’s ‘catchers’ stayed back.  Would you categorise this Foreign Minister as  a people smuggler.”  Or does he get immunity as  he happens to be a powerful Minister in the Government!

In the early 90s a Junior Minister, a Tamil, came over to Toronto  with a mini-wedding party to give his daughter in  marriage. The wedding happened and the bride’s politician Dad went back home to Sri Lanka leaving behind the wedding party  to wangle their way to become permanent Canadian residents.  I suppose according to your Chief Government Whip’s vindictive logic, this Tamil Junior Minister is not a people smuggler” because this act didn’t happen during the Rajapaksa era.  Right! Sish…!  What logic! What nasty Yahapalanaya vindictive politics!!

Trying to be vindictive hoping that you could band-aid the Rajapaksa government with immoral and crude fairy tales like the intended coup, the 18 billion dollar hidden bank accounts of the Rajapaksa’s, the Lamborghini, the golden horses the blame game of the Meethotamulla garbage Episode where you all buried  people alive, are unfortunate.  There is nothing smart about all of this nor does it belie Good Governance with the Bond Scam which is a family of albatrosses around your necks.  Not that the Rajapaksa government were made up of angels either  Far from it.  And some of their rejects by the people are comfortable earning their perks in your camp, especially the Rs. 100,000 bonus each month.

What is most upsetting was the comment that your Chief Government Whip made.  He said, as I read it in The Island that  ”… Action should be taken against those officials who took them using the official allocations provided to them and earned money .  Those human smugglers disrespected the foreign service.”

Was your Chief Government Whip insinuating that the Sri Lankan Diplomats sent to Canada earned ‘kappan’ to let their domestics stay back,  For heaven’s sake do you really believe it?

My association with some of the Sri Lankan diplomats in Canada projected that they had some class, and not cussed enough and cheap to siphon off monies that the poor domestic earned.  If any of them were, it shows up the quality of  diplomats that the Foreign Ministry have recruited.  It is now for the Chief Government Whip to clear the doubts among many of us and identify the diplomats that he was using to get at the Rajapaksa era.

It is just too bad and please stop trying to fool your people and cut out your vindictive politics as I have my doubts that it is going to pay the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe Combo well to come out smelling like roses as you all have outclassed the Rajapaksa Government in every negative aspect that you all seem to point out to the masses.  The Yahapalanaya Good-Cops are now suspect that they  have become  Bad Cops in the eyes of  Sri Lankans in today’s democracy.

The question to you Mr. President and Mr. Prime Minister is, what the heck are you going to do about it?

Sincerely,

Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.)