8 November 2024 12:08 am Views - 5024
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Sarvajana Balaya candidate for the Colombo district Udaya Gammanpila |
Sarvajana Balaya candidate for the Colombo district Udaya Gammanpila who is in the centre of controversy regarding his revelation on the Easter Sunday attacks shared his views further in this regard with Daily Mirror.
Excerpts of the interview:
Q: Ahead of the general election, you suddenly raised this issue of the Easter Sunday attacks. Why did you raise it at this particular time?
Well, it is not sudden. We were aware that the previous president appointed two committees and during the tail end of the election campaign, those two reports were made available to the President. So, on October 6, when the President decided to visit Katuwapitiya Church, I thought he was going there to make them public.
And very curiously, the President did not take those two reports with him and the Cardinal did not raise the issue about the reports as well. So, I was a bit surprised. I was very curious. I felt something fishy. And on October7, at a media briefing, I asked the president why he didn’t he take those reports and made them public? When he was in the opposition, he said the reports prepared with public funds must be made available for the public awareness because they have a right to know the contents.
So, I reminded him. On October 10, anonymously, I received these two reports by post. So, I challenged the president. Then, at the next media briefing on October 24, I said, look, I am in the possession of these two reports and unless you perform your duty by publishing these two reports, I am going to make those public.
President failed to do that within seven days as I said, as I challenged. Then, I decided to make those public. That’s what happened.
So, this is not all of a sudden. Yes, all of a sudden, the President decided to go to Katuwapitiya without reports and all of a sudden, I received these reports by mail.
Not at all. I just reminded you what was the president’s stand about these reports when he was a member of the Opposition. He pressed the then president to make those reports public saying that the public have the right to know the contents of the reports prepared with public funds. So, isn’t it applicable to the two reports suppressed by the present president?
The President is going to prepare a new report which is based on a new investigation without making these two reports public.
What does it mean? He has an ulterior motive. He wants to suppress these reports to save two of his political colleagues, namely Ravi Seneviratne and Shani Abeysekara. Therefore, the President has abused his power to safeguard his political colleagues.
That’s something bad. Isn’t it something that we should expose? Shouldn’t we bring this to public’s attention? So, I did my duty as an opposition politician.
Q: Now you have challenged the Public Security Minister Vijitha Herath for a public debate.
Will he accept it in your view?
Well, I have been knowing Minister Vijitha Herath for the last 25 years. In fact, I first met him at my very first TV debate 25 years ago. So, we have been debating for a very long period of time and he is the present media spokesman of the government.
I was holding that post in a previous government and I was a former cabinet minister in two governments. Therefore, I don’t think he has any reason to reject my challenge. He has only one reason.
As I claim, if he also admits that he was lying to the public, he doesn’t want to get himself exposed. Then of course, he would avoid. Otherwise, I am confident he would accept because I raise certain issues. Then when the people listen to me, they feel I was correct. But at the same time when Minister Vijitha Herath responds to me, people may feel Vijitha was correct.
But if we debate at the same place, then people have the opportunity to understand what the truth is. I think people have the right to know the truth. So, I think Minister Vijitha Herath is bound to accept this challenge.
Otherwise, he will get exposed as a liar.
Q: How did you get hold of this confidential document? Is that a miracle?
A: This is not a miracle at all. Actually, if you are involved in investigative journalism, you are quite familiar with this phenomenon because I am a politician who expose corruption of the governments, politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, everybody.
Therefore, it is very usual for me to receive information anonymously. There are bold people who visit my office, hand over documents and some say, sir, if you want me to sit with you at a media briefing to explain this, I am ready to come. There are very few people like that.
But most of the people who provide information, they don’t want to expose themselves. So, they always send information anonymously. This is quite usual and we are quite familiar with this kind of situations.
Q: Will the Easter Sunday attacks issue backfire against this government?
Of course, it has already backfired. They are going to appoint Shani Abeysekara and Ravi Seneviratne to probe into this attack to find the truth. According to them, truth has been manipulated and suppressed.
So, we have to get the truth. But, these two reports suppressed by the President say these two officers are suspects, they are responsible for the attack, their negligence caused the attack. Therefore, Ravi Seneviratne and Shani Abeysekara must be prosecuted for criminal negligence.
So, these two reports have changed the landscape. The investigators have turned to be the accused. So, I think if the government wants to do a credible investigation, they have two options.
Either they should get involved totally independent people to do the investigation apart from these two officers. If they are going to commence a new investigation with these two officers, credibility of that investigation would be minus.
Q: However, the Cardinal or the Catholic Church as the most concerned group in this case don’t accept your findings. What do you say?
Actually, that was very surprising.
When I was to make those two reports public, the Cardinal said that I am also in possession of these two reports. But he decided not to disclose to the Catholic community. And now Catholic community itself questions why our leader, one of the leaders, suppresses these critical reports.
Secondly, the Cardinal said I would reject these two reports because two officers of the present government have been made guilty by these two reports. I mean, that’s not a good rationale to reject these two reports. You can’t reject reports just because two government officers have made the accused.
There must be a rational way of explaining the reason to reject the report. There was no such explanation. My duty was to disclose two reports which has been deliberately suppressed by the President.
It’s not my duty to convince because I am not the authors of these two reports. So, I am not bound to convince the Catholic community or the government or anybody else to accept these two reports. But one thing is clear.
There are several exposures in these two reports. If somebody rejects, they can’t just say we reject these two reports. Instead, they should have gone to the Court of Appeal and quashed these findings.
Or alternatively, they should have objected to these committee members at their appointment after seeing the report. Once they find that it’s against their beliefs or it’s against their friends, that’s not a way of rejecting reports.
Q:The Cardinal always talks about a mastermind behind this attack. Who is this mastermind?
I don’t know the investigative capabilities of the people who talk about the mastermind. But FBI, the world’s leading investigative organisation as well as Australian Federal Police have concluded that the people who committed suicide at the blast as well as the people who are under arrest are the people who are responsible. So, if somebody knows about the mastermind behind the attack, they should disclose the facts possessed by them.
On the other hand, if you further investigate along the findings of the Alwis Committee report, of course, if there is any mastermind that can be found because present Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security, Ravi Seneviratne had been sitting on the information received by him with regard to the attack for 12 days without taking any action. He has never explained why he did so. If the government or any investigative authority question him with regard to this, we can find out whether he was under influence of somebody.
If there is a person who forced him not to take any action against Saharan’s attack for 12 days, that’s the mastermind as far as we could see.
Q:This debate is now focused away from the real culprit. Even the ISIS admitted that they carried out this attack . But instead of debating on that aspect, in Sri Lanka, we debate on another aspect. Isn’t it?
A: As you correctly pointed out, ISIS has admitted that they are responsible for the attacks. Thirdly, FBI of USA and Australian Federal Police have concluded that they were behind this. Instead of going through those routes. Now nobody talks about ISIS role in Sri Lanka and the danger of extremism prevails in Sri Lanka.
Without discussing those topics and taking any precautionary measures, we discussed about unfounded mastermind and levelling allegations against each other. So this is a very sad situation, really disappointing. We are playing politics with national security.
That’s not a situation acceptable to a nation.
Q:And actually, in your view, why is the Cardinal doing it?
Frankly, I don’t know. Actually, you should interview him and raise the very same question.
Q:Do you suspect any political motivation behind this?
He is a religious leader. So I don’t want to dig into that aspect of it.