S .Akurugoda

As per media reports, several Fundamental Rights (FR) petitions were filed at the Supreme Court,  challenging the decision of the President to dissolve Parliament, on March 2, and the decision by the Elections Commission to reschedule elections, on June 20, amidst the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a well known foreign-funded NGO, is among the eight petitioners who filed the applications.

In a news item appeared on May 8, 2020, Rohana Hettiarachchi Convener of another foreign-funded NGO, People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), has said that the conduct of the parliamentary election wouldn’t be possible on June 20 due to the incidence of Covid-19 and he is expected to meet EC Chairman  Mahinda Deshapriya within the next few days.

Let us examine who are representing these NGOs and what their objectives would be when challenging the decision of the President to dissolve Parliament.

According to websites of NGOs,  CPA is financed by more than 20 donor agencies from USA, EU, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden and UN (including UNICEF, UNDP and UNHCR) while  PAFFREL is funded by agencies from USA, UK, Canada, Sweden, Norway and Australia in addition to UNDP, British High Commission and embassies of Japan and Germany in Colombo.  It is interesting to note that NGOs like The National Peace Council and Sarvodaya are leading partners of PAFEEREL. In fact, most of the sources of donor agencies and the local agents who are running these NGOs are the same.          

It is also interesting to note that the Chairmen of the CPA , Chandraguptha Thenuwara , is the one who leads a malicious campaign against Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s dual citizenship certificate during the last presidential election. The other notable directors Jayadeva Uyangoda and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu need no introduction since there are several publications available describing what they have said and done during the war against terrorism. 

 We remember how these NGOs justified international intervention (including through the UN and US) and called for solutions manufactured from the outside spending billions of Rupees got from foreign donors which money should have gone to the poor people in the country. These NGOs and their colonial masters in the West were behind the propaganda on behalf of separatism in general and the LTTE in particular.

Although the CPA and similar ilk were in the driver’s seat during the Chandrika-Ranil failed regimes, and later during the Ranil-Sirisena (so-called yahapalana) regime, attempting to brainwash the country from top political hierarchy to grassroots level, spending billions of rupees, the mass support received from the general public to eradicate terrorism in 2009 and to chase away the above notorious regimes even before the end of their terms are clear proofs that the peace-loving people of Sri Lanka are wiser than the foreign-funded policy prophets.

It looks like these NGOs have started, once again, to achieve their objectives disregarding the rights of the majority citizens of the country.  The aim of the politicians involved is well known since the voters rejected them twice, repeatedly, once in 2018 (Local Government Election) and again in 2019 (Presidential Election). What these politicians say is to cancel the election and to reactivate the old parliament.  Foreign-funded NGOs are providing moral support to those rejected politicians to destabilise the country once again.

Sri Lanka is a sovereign nation and its people must have the supreme power to choose their representatives in the Parliament to govern them, as they wish, and it should not be a right of the opportunistic local agents of colonial masters of the west. Certainly, it is not the intention of the people of Sri Lanka to reinstall an administration rejected twice during the last two years by the majority of its citizens?  

S .Akurugoda