Strange!
Mahinda was afraid the CID would prove his innocence?
Last week Mahinda Rajapakse got the Supreme Court to stall any further
CID investigation into the Helping Hambanthota account. It's difficult
to comment on the Supreme Court judgment - and we are not about
to go down that road here.
But,
that shouldn't stop us from commenting on Mr Rajapakse's conduct.
The Prime Minister and presidential candidate claims he has clean
hands, and that the Helping Hambanthota contretemps involved no
malpractice. Having said so, he goes to the Supreme Court to stop
a regular CID investigation on its tracks?
Come
again, Sir? You have clean hands - then you go to the Supreme Court
to void a routine probe that can only confirm that you are innocent??
Rajapakse
has won a legal victory but does he have one moral leg to stand
on??
What's
scaring Rajapakse? That the CID will find something to hang him
with before the poll?? No, that's impossible, for the simple and
logical reason that Rajapakse says his hands are squeaky clean.
By
having the investigation stalled, Mahinda Rajapakse comes as close
as he can to admitting his guilt before the people of this country.
To think that the state media is having a party out there, trying
to paint his Supreme Court judgment a Rajapakse victory!
His
opponents are going for his jugular says Rajapakse. That's what
opponents are entitled to do. But, Rajapakse seems to have a funny
assessment sometimes of who his opponents are. He wants a CID investigation
stopped. But the CID functions under a Minister of his government,
and the Attorney General who supported the CID investigation, is
a state functionary. It's not the law of the jungle operating out
there -- it's the law of the land.
Mahinda
Rajapakse comes before the people, saying 'I do not want the law
of the land to operate with regard to me -- I am going to the Supreme
Court to prevent the law of the land from taking its usual course.''
The Supreme Court opines "no more investigation'' -- and Rajapakse
celebrates it as victory?
What
exactly are the people supposed to think? An innocent man got a
CID investigation skidded because his innocence was about to be
revealed? That there was a grand conspiracy between CID officers
and the Attorney General's department -- all honorable officials
working for the state and therefore by extension for the PM's government
-- to show the people that Mahinda Rajapakse is not guilty? Why
is Rajapakse so mortally afraid of being proven innocent?
When
the Helping Hambanthota drama erupted, Mahinda Rajapakse seemed
determined from its sputtering start, to hog the moral low ground.
He started by returning the Helping Hambanthota money, some 82 million
of it, to the central fund. At the time, it was a move curious enough
to beg the question "why did he have to return the money, if
he didn't do anything wrong establishing the account?''
This
writer asked Nimal Siripla de Silva the Cabinet spokesman for some
kind of answer to this question. Silva replied that my question
"exposed'' me as a UNP journalist.
As
a result, this writer now has two kinds of decorations on his lapel.
One is an accusation by the SLFP that I'm a UNP journalist. The
next is an accusation by the UNP that I'm a SLFP journalist.
Take
this paragraph that I wrote a few weeks back: "(Ranil Wickremesinghe)
says immature things and says them babyishly. For instance, last
week he said that coconut tree climbers will have it easy in a UNP
government because they can be instructed from below with the use
of mobile phones.'' (Sunday Times September 11th.)
The
Wickremesinghe camp, incensed when that was written, instantly anointed
me a JVP-SLFP stooge. UNPers have been doing so for a while now,
particularly after this columnist was critical of former UNP defence
minister Tilak Marapana for mishandling the post-ceasefire situation.
The JVP carried full-page advertisements in support of itself, quoting
this writer criticizing Marapana. The adverts appeared in English
and Sinhala newspapers days before the 2004 April elections.
UNPers
then threw the epithet "PA sympathizer'' at me after that,
and they continue to do so now. The SLFP currently says I'm a UNP
journalist, because I have asked some legitimate questions about
Mahinda Rajapakse's accountability on the Helping Hambanthota account.
After being simultaneously coloured blue, then red, and then green,
I suppose I must be looking these days like a jelly in fruit salad.
The
Rajapakse camp can throw its punches at this highly coloured target.
That doesn't do anything to cleanse the Helping Hambanthota cesspit.
Rajapakse's camp says the UNP was making use of the CID investigation
- - which he therefore got stalled last week. His camp is wrong
on that. The UNP seems to have the same terribly messed up values
that Rajapakse has got. The party doesn't seem to have the integrity
to say clearly that Rajapakse was wrong going to the Supreme Court
to stall a routine investigation by regular state officials. The
UNP appears as gutless and morally bankrupt as the SLFP - which
is why a journalist has to step into the breach and say: "Rajapakse
got an investigation stalled, when he screams he did no wrong."
Some
previous Sri Lankan Law Reports would indicate that a Managing Director
of an international school went to the Supreme Court to abort a
CID investigation into his defaulting on EPF payments. The Supreme
Court told him "anyone who comes here filing for fundamental
rights in order to stall a CID investigation will be hauled in future
for contempt of court.''
Mahinda
Rajapakse has secured a totally different judgment from the Supreme
Court in a similar case. It's his good fortune that the court in
its wisdom gave him that judgment. But Rajapakse has revealed his
utter moral bankruptcy by going before court, and made the people
draw one indisputable inference. In the eyes of reasoning and discerning
people, he is now a presidential candidate who -- by his own conduct
-- is a suspect fraudster who couldn't take being properly investigated
and exonerated by state officials….
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