{"id":92904,"date":"2019-09-09T12:30:27","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T19:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=92904"},"modified":"2019-09-09T12:30:27","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T19:30:27","slug":"waiting-for-mahendran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/09\/09\/waiting-for-mahendran\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for Mahendran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

President Maithripala Sirisena is in a mighty hurry to bring ex-Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran to justice, over the bond scams. One may recall that he went out of his way to help cover up the bond scams and take Mahendran off the hook, in 2015. He made a mockery of his commitment to good governance by dissolving Parliament before the first COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) report on the bond scam was presented, and, thereby, prevented it from having an adverse impact on the UNP\u2019s electoral performance. Today, in a dramatic turn of events, with only a couple of months to go for the end of his term, he is all out to have Mahendran brought back. If only he had gone hell for leather to make Mahendran stand trial for the bond scam in 2015 itself!
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President, the other day, made a propaganda show of signing what was made out to be a document seeking the extradition of Mahendran. That was something he could have done in private. He seems to be twisting the poniard he has sunk into Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe\u2019s back, up to the quillion, so to speak. Ranil has not recovered from the findings of the presidential bond probe commission, which has also ruined the UNP\u2019s chances of winning elections.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahendran has become a huge embarrassment to PM Wickremesinghe, who brought him in as the Central Bank Governor. The President is aware that if Mahendran can be brought back to stand trial, the latter is likely to rat on the real masterminds of the bond scams in retaliation for having been thrown to the wolves by the UNP-led government. Mahendran would not have dared commit that offence, without political backing. Having Mahendran here is something the PM, troubled by an intraparty dispute, wants like a hole in the head. Has President Sirisena sought to give a leg-up to Deputy UNP leader Sajith Premadasa,who is on a campaign to secure presidential candidacy? The former, who is well disposed towards the latter, is apparently, trying to queer the pitch for Ranil, who is also desirous of running for President.
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It has been reported that documents running into thousands of pages on Mahendran have been sent to Singapore. Hefty as the dossiers presented in support of Sri Lanka\u2019s call for Mahendran\u2019s extradition may be, it is not likely to carry much weight with Singapore, as some legal experts have opined. They maintain that Singapore is not likely to extradite one of its citizens simply because Sri Lanka makes a request to that effect.
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Singapore will blot its copybook indelibly if it refuses to extradite Mahendran. The message it will send to the rest of the world, in such an eventuality, will be that its professionals can commit any fraud overseas, return home and enjoy legal immunity; the countries that choose to employ them will be left high and dry. The Sri Lanka-Singapore Free Trade Agreement provides for employing Singaporean professionals here. They, too, will be able to do anything wrong here and flee and live like Mahendran.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Waiting for Godot\u2019 is the name of an absurd play by Samuel Beckett; two persons therein wait for the title character, who never comes. What shall we call the absurd drama directed by President Sirisena? Shall we call it \u2018Waiting for Mahendran\u2019, for the protagonist will never come and all of us will be tired of waiting?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About four and a half years have elapsed since the first bond scam was committed. The President ought to explain why he waited until the tail end of his term to initiate the process of bringing Mahendran to justice.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Sirisena has to atone for the sin he committed by helping cover up the bond scams initially and keeping the public in the dark in the run-up to the 2015 general election. Let him be urged to fish or cut bait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Island President Maithripala Sirisena is in a mighty hurry to bring ex-Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran to justice, over the bond scams. One may recall that he went out of his way to help cover up the bond scams and take Mahendran off the hook, in 2015. He made a mockery of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92904","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=92904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}