| The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake | ||||||
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Strange!
Mahinda was afraid the CID would prove his innocence? 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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