{"id":46119,"date":"2015-07-24T21:56:22","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T03:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=46119"},"modified":"2015-07-24T12:21:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-24T19:21:17","slug":"ranil-is-the-richard-nixon-of-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/07\/24\/ranil-is-the-richard-nixon-of-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranil is the Richard Nixon of Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Metteyya Brahmana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Most of us who are familiar with the Watergate scandal that forced US President Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace, and are also familiar with the emerging details of the largest bond fraud in Sri Lankan history, see the parallels fairly clearly and wonder whether the current Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickramasinghe, will fall from grace in like fashion.<\/p>\n

Richard Nixon, as you might recall, denied any involvement with Watergate right up until moment that the tapes were leaked to the press that proved his involvement with the cover-up of the burglary at the Democratic National Headquarters by Republican Party operatives. A few months after the break-in, Nixon claimed his presidential lawyer, John Dean, had conducted a thorough investigation (which was later shown to be a complete fabrication), and stated based on this investigation, “I can say categorically that… no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident.”(1) \u00a0Nixon was also famous for saying, I will never tell a lie\u201d, when all who knew him revealed that he constantly lied as part of a pathology and defect in his personality and character.<\/p>\n

The parallels to Watergate and the Central Bank Fraud are very close.\u00a0 Ranil Wickramasinghe had a phony \u2018independent\u2019 committee of UNP party loyalists do an investigation which found that Arjuna Mahendran had no direct involvement\u201d as the Central Bank Governor in the issuance of bonds to his son-in-law\u2019s securities firm, Perpetual Treasuries.<\/p>\n

However, the COPE report (2) which was in an interim draft form when it was leaked to the press, tells a completely different story than the \u2018no direct involvement conclusion\u201d by Ranil\u2019s independent committee.\u00a0 The COPE report consisted of recorded testimony from 49 witnesses, and two of these witnesses \u2013 Dr. Azim and Mrs. Seneviratne \u2013 who were superintendents in the department where the bond auction was taking place – claimed that the Central Bank Governor came into their department on two occasions: once, during the course of the auction and remained there until the auction was finished, and on the second occasion after the auction had been completed he returned with two deputy ministers from the Central Bank, demanded to see the bidding list, and after reviewing the bidding list directed Azim and Seneviratne, over their objections, to accept bids to the exact amount of his son-in-law\u2019s bid.\u00a0 Azim and Seneviratne also testified that in their entire careers at the Central Bank, no Central Bank Governor other than Mahendran had ever come into their department before during an auction, and never had told them which bids or amounts they should accept or not.<\/p>\n

When Mahendran was questioned about his personal involvement and presence during the bond auction and issuance of the bonds to his son-in-law\u2019s firm before COPE committee investigators, he claimed he was there at the auction on strong directives\u201d from Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe.(3)<\/p>\n

Now we know we know why Ranil Wickramasinghe has been trying to prevent the COPE report from being disclosed to the public \u2013 it implicates \u2018him\u2019 in securities fraud, insider trading, and obstruction of justice, which are all serious crimes that carry stiff prison sentences.\u00a0 Ranil knows the voters of Sri Lanka would never take him or his UNP party seriously on their claim to bring \u2018good governance\u2019 to Sri Lanka knowing he was involved in such major crimes while being in control of the Sri Lankan government for only six months.<\/p>\n

Nixon resigned in disgrace rather than face an impeachment trial which certainly would have found him guilty of serious crime, now we will see if Ranil will do the same or bring down the entire UNP party with him by continuing to contest this election.<\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

(1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 “Watergate Retrospective: The Decline and Fall”, Time Magazine, August 19, 1974.<\/p>\n

(2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 COPE Interim Draft Report of Bond Fraud (Page 8): https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/271728734\/COPE-Report-on-Bond-Fraud-in-Sri-Lanka<\/a><\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Stinking details on Bond scam COPE report reveals\u201d, Ceylon Today, July 5, 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Metteyya Brahmana Most of us who are familiar with the Watergate scandal that forced US President Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace, and are also familiar with the emerging details of the largest bond fraud in Sri Lankan history, see the parallels fairly clearly and wonder whether the current Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Ranil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}