Editorial Courtesy The Island

September 15, 2017, 10:09 pm
The ongoing presidential commission of inquiry probe into the bond scams has taken a dramatic turn with owner of Perpetual Treasuries Arjun Aloysius refusing to testify. The commission has held that it cannot order him to give evidence. But, Senior Additional Solicitor General Dappula de Livera PC, who is the Chief Counsel of the Attorney General’s Department before the commission, is convinced otherwise. He is reported to have said he cannot agree with the commission’s decision not to compel Aloysius to give evidence. He says he has stated the Attorney General’s opinion on the issue!

We are intrigued.

Now, the main witnesses can feign memory loss or refuse to talk before the presidential commission! We, however, don’t intend to get involved in this legal tussle and, therefore, refrain from discussing the issue . Let legal heavyweights fight it out.

But, it is now patently clear that the corrupt politicians who masterminded the bond scams and used some public officials and corporate bigwigs to carry out the rackets are all out to save the culprits. A government which keeps postponing elections, unable to face them, is capable of stooping to any level to remain in power. But for the power struggle between the SLFP and the UNP, in the ruling coalition, no bond scam probe would have got underway.

This is why we keep saying that yahapalanaya is a farce and politicians in power and their cronies on the wrong side of the law are too big to be brought to justice just like their predecessors.

The AG’s Department officials can rest assured that all right-thinking people are on their side, and the efforts they have been making against numerous odds to ascertain information about the bond scams have not gone unappreciated. They and their Central Bank counterparts, save a handful of venal ones, have done the country proud; we need many more professionals of their calibre to make this country a better place for future generations to live in. It behoves other state employees, their counterparts in the private sector and the members of the general public to emulate those officials and stand up and be counted in the country’s fight against corruption.

The bond scams are now before the people’s court and those who try to derail the ongoing investigations there into through devious are making a terrible mistake. They may recall that the mighty Rajapaksa government came crashing down not because of any charges proved in courts against its members; it fell due to public perception that it was corrupt to the core in spite of the absence of irrefutable evidence. But, there has emerged enough and more damning evidence against the bond racketeers and people can now decide how to deal with the present regime, which is like a lorry with Budu saranai (blessings of the Buddha) and devi pihitai (blessings of God), prominently written on it, illegally transporting cattle.

President Maithripala Sirisena let the bond racketeers off the hook in 2015 by dissolving Parliament before the first COPE (Commission of Public Enterprises) report on the bond scams was presented to it. Emboldened, the politically backed crooks committed the second bond racket the following year, causing heavy losses to the state banks and the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF). Now, it is incumbent upon the President to clean up the mess.

Kid glove treatment, being given to bond racketeers, must stop forthwith. A former Secretary to the President has been jailed for allocating Rs. 600 million for sil redi distribution in the run-up to the last presidential election allegedly in support of the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the fray. The bond racketeers who caused losses to the state to the tune of billions of rupees are still free!

Unless President Sirisena, elected by people to eliminate corruption and usher in good governance, ensures that the perpetrators of the biggest-ever financial fraud are made to pay for their crime and losses recovered, he will incur much public opprobrium.