{"id":85360,"date":"2019-02-05T23:23:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T05:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=85360"},"modified":"2019-02-05T06:04:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T13:04:41","slug":"lessons-learned-presidential-pardon-for-sarath-fonseka-was-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/02\/05\/lessons-learned-presidential-pardon-for-sarath-fonseka-was-a-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"LESSONS LEARNED-PRESIDENTIAL PARDON FOR SARATH FONSEKA WAS A MISTAKE"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong>By M D P DISSANAYAKE<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>President Sirisena gave full pardon to former convicted criminal Sarath Fonseka\u00a0 simultaneously restoring, redecorating, recycling all his privileges, colours etc.\u00a0\u00a0 Subsequently he was awarded the prestigious Award of Field Marshal .<\/p>\n<p>Mr Gotabaya Rajapakse made strong recommendations to President Mahinda Rajapakse to appoint Sarath Fonseka for the role of Army Commander, by-passing several other Senior High Ranked Officials.<\/p>\n<p>Has Sarath Fonseka learnt any lessons and was he grateful to those who helped him when he was in difficulty?\u00a0 Or President Sirisena \u00a0and Mr Gotabaya Rajapakse are having second thoughts of their past actions?<\/p>\n<p>Instead of releasing Sarath Fonseka, the President could have released some other ordinary citizen in prison, in such situations the President Sirisena may not have to face derogatory remarks and insults from the Field Marshal SF today.\u00a0\u00a0 <strong>We cannot read the mind-set of an individual.<\/strong> \u00a0As Peter Falk said in Columbo, <strong>YOU CAN\u2019T GET A SEARCH WARRANT FOR WHAT IS INSIDE YOUR MIND\u201d.<\/strong>\u00a0 If Galaboda Aththe Buddhist monk had been released,\u00a0 it \u00a0would not take 24 hours for him turn back and \u00a0display his anger, use abusive language and create chaos in the country.\u00a0 \u00a0Whilst\u00a0 hundreds of ordinary citizens are daily arrested and prisoned for committing crimes,<strong> it is seldom key figures \u00a0such as Sarath Fonseka, Duminda Silva, Buddharakkitha, Galaboda Aththe are caught and punished.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>With the lessons learned, such persons should remain behind bars, thus providing peace and harmony for the civil society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By M D P DISSANAYAKE President Sirisena gave full pardon to former convicted criminal Sarath Fonseka\u00a0 simultaneously restoring, redecorating, recycling all his privileges, colours etc.\u00a0\u00a0 Subsequently he was awarded the prestigious Award of Field Marshal . Mr Gotabaya Rajapakse made strong recommendations to President Mahinda Rajapakse to appoint Sarath Fonseka for the role of Army [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-m-d-p-dissanayake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85360","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=85360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}