Dr Sudath Gunasekara

I fully agree with PC Manohara.This kind of pardoning is something unheard and unseen in Statecraft anywhere in the world. Pardoning two convicted and sentenced criminals who waged war against the State, (one for life and the other for 200 years, thereby making the supreme court a mockery) in the public eye. It is crystal clear that this decision of the President is aimed at winning Tamil support at the next Presidential election. I am not a lawyer. But, even as a lay man, I think this type of decisions, that appears to be a gross abuse of supreme executive power and misuse of prerogative authority to gain highly personal benefits should be condemned by everybody who love the country and therefore warrants immediate withdrawal from constitutional or legal texts in the interests of the country and the general public, so that no future President will indulge in this type of abuses for personal gain.  It is best therefore, that this type of judicial decisions should be left as an exceptional prerogative of the court.

    Furthermore, it appears that the President has completely forgotten that he was elected by the Parliament for the vacancy created by the resignation of Gotabhaya prematurely only for the period left behind by him. Moreover, it was the same Parliament elected in 2020 on a specific election manifesto, in addition to the 2019 manifesto of Gotabhaya, both of which he has to strictly abide by until the next Presidential election in 2025.

     As such he has no legal authority to bypass or exceed the unprecedented mandate given to Gotabhaya by 69 m voters in 2019 and the mandate given to SLPP in 2020. He also should not forget how he and his party were routed in the 2020 general election, even without a single seat in Parliament. It is external manipulation and sheer that luck brought from his previous birth and the miscalculations and lack of foresight on the part of the SLPP, which it has already realized by now. If the SLPP withdraws its support the match will be over.

    Therefore, whatever he does as President, it has to be within the framework of the above mentioned two mandates. As far As I know he has no public mandate or ay constitutional provision take decisions like this. Any decision taken contrary to them will be unconstitutional, illegal, immoral and unethical. The entire Rajapaksa clan take the full responsibility for all these Jaathidroehi and Dhesadrohi decisions taken by their assumed guardian and savior.

    This is not the only shady decision he has taken.To quote another such decision he has taken with an eye on the Tamil vote is the decision to take ministers Sentil Thondaman, a novice to politics to woo the estate Tamil vote and Douglas Devaananda as members of his Indian delegation to woo the Tamil vote in the north. In my view both these persons are utterly unsuitable to represent this country in any international forum.

    Not only that, if you look at most of his decisions, they all point to two issues.The first is the minority vote at the next Presidential election and the second is the multiple support he expects to get from the West by winning them over by supporting their agenda.

    As for me I do not know who his advisers are. Hope they are not the same type, who sent Gotabhaya to exile at midnight