Johnston urges Catholic clergy not to be misled by opposition political parties

  By Yohan Perera   

 Chief Government Whip and Minister Johnston Fernando urged members of the Catholic clergy not to be misled by the opposition political parties, who are trying to use them to fulfil their own political ambitions. The minister said that opposition’s conspirators have infiltrated the Catholic Church. “I call on all reverend fathers and other members of the clergy not to fall for opposition conspirators’ tactics and thereby become their cat paws. We have seen that they capitalize on the summoning of Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini to the CID. They are using this to spread hate against this government. Fr. Cyril Gamini’s visit to the CID was to record a statement.   

He had made public statements and the CID wants an official record from him. He was called to make a statement to CID is in accordance with the existing laws. The CID is the investigating body of the Easter Sunday terror attacks so it is natural they record a statement from the Reverend father. Supposed the CID did not do so, then the very same opposition would have clamored that we did not carry out a proper investigation. That is the nature of the opposition we have in this country today.” The Minister said.   

Addressing a ceremony held at the launch of the Road Development authority’s premix plant at Andigamawattte in Katugampola on Saturday the minister further said, “during the past two years we never heard the opposition speaking of anything that would benefit of the country. They never spoke of opening the country to enable foreign tourists to come in. They never spoke of promoting agriculture or industries to help the economy. They never spoke of assisting the government to overcome challenges posed by the pandemic,” he added.   

Minister Fernando said he was thankful to the Chairman and staff members of the RDA for commencing operations at the new premix asphalt plant. “When I visited the premix asphalt plant at Ganepola in January this year, I found heaps of machinery to be auctioned as scrap iron. After inquiries I found that those parts of equipment could be repaired and put back to use.   Some workers said that they could repair them. They did so within months. They spent Rs 28 million to build a premix asphalt plant. Today we opened this new plant with equipment put back to use by our workers. This plant has the capacity to turn out 4,000 metric tons of premix asphalt per month. That means it could supply 48,000 metric tons of premix asphalt per year to our projects,” he said.