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In the glaring absence of an immediate Foreign Office response to Britain’s decision to impose sanctions on three former Lankan Armed Force Commanders, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa emerged from semi-retirement to declare that he, as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces during the final years of the terrorist war, will accept full responsibility since “It was I, as the Executive President of Sri Lanka, who took the decision to militarily defeat the LTTE, and the armed forces implemented that decision on the ground.”

In a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon, the former president said, “I categorically reject the UK government’s allegation of widespread human rights violations during the military operations. Lord Naseby stated in the House of Lords on October 12, 2017, that the then UK Defence Attache in Colombo, Lieutenant Colonel Anton Gash, had, in conversation with him, praised the discipline of the Sri Lanka Army and stated that there certainly was no policy to kill civilians.

“Because Lt. Col. Anton Gash’s wartime dispatches to London differ so significantly from the narrative promoted by the UK political authorities, only a heavily redacted version of those dispatches has been released. We conducted military operations only against the LTTE and not against the Tamil people.”

The British government on Monday announced it was placing sanctions on three former Sri Lankan military commanders, namely, Shavendra Silva, Jagath Jayasuriya and former Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda. Their alleged crimes: “Serious human rights abuses and violations during the Sri Lanka civil war, including extrajudicial killings, torture and/or perpetration of sexual violence.” Apart from blackening their names worldwide,  sanctions imposed include, “British travel bans and asset freezes.”

Have war crime charges been levelled against the named in any British court? If not, before which tribunal has Lanka’s Three Musketeers been brought to meet British justice?

Nay, as Britain’s statement frankly admits, the condemned three musketeers have been hanged, drawn and quartered with indictment simultaneously served, on the streets of a downtrodden north London borough to fulfil the promises a black Labour candidate gave to a section of his multiracial electorate at last year’s British general election in July.

THE ACCUSER: Labour’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy acts to fulfil an election promise to his Tottenham borough’s constituents

The British Government’s statement quotes David Lammy–now elevated to Foreign Secretary–as saying, “I made a commitment during the election campaign to ensure those responsible are not allowed impunity. This decision ensures that those responsible for past human rights violations and abuses are held accountable.”

And where did those serious allegations of human rights abuses against the three named military men stem from? Hearsay? From any court record? Or from the defeated remaining residue of Tiger terrorists or their surviving families, who sought refuge by exaggerated claims of mass human rights abuses and found safe haven in his Tottenhem borough?

Is that the prejudiced jury, with an axe of hate to grind and a revenge lust to sate, and David Lammy, their vote-seeking judge of a kangaroo court, fit to serve indictment and execute summary punishment with scant regard for natural justice?

Labour’s Lammy himself is not below stooping to covet votes at elections, even by flouting rules. Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported on May 10, 2016 that during London’s mayoral nomination elections, he had paid for an automated service that played a recorded message to London’s Labour party members, earnestly asking them to cast their votes for him. Despite this disallowed intrusive invasion of homes, he had only finished fourth in the party race, picking up less than 10 percent of votes.

As the Guardian reported, the Information Commissioner’s Office fined David Lammy £5,000 for authorising the calls without gaining permission to contact the party members concerned. He had been warned by the company he had used to make the calls on his behalf that prior permission was mandatory, but still he had gone ahead. The number of intrusive calls he made: ‘35,000 calls featuring a recorded message urging people to back his nomination’.

The Commissioner told Lammy: “The law requires you to have permission before making calls with recorded messages. And if the law isn’t followed, the regulator will act.”

Apart from topping Labour’s list of being its topmost earner, with a whopping £202,000 on top of an MP’s salary between December 2019 and 2024, as revealed in a Sky TV survey, Lammy earned for himself a place in Westminster’s dubious book of parliamentary records by becoming the first British politician in history—as British newspapers have discovered—”to be found guilty of making 35,000 nuisance calls.”

Imagine, pestering the neighborhood with 35,000 nuisance calls? Not conduct becoming, is it, for a MP and future Foreign Secretary in a land where an Englishman’s home is his castle?

Furthermore, the BBC reported in 2022 that a parliamentary inquiry had found David Lammy—a first-generation London-born dual citizen of Guyanese parents—had broken the rules of disclosure by failing to register 16 financial interests, including ticket payments to American football and boxing matches in London, within the set time frame.

As the BBC report said, “The inquiry began in June of 2022, after Ms. Stone, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, received allegations against Lammy that he was involved with 8 interests between 7th October and 15th November 2021, without declaring them. Ms. Stone found a further 7 events, undeclared in the register within the specified 28 days. Lammy himself then brought to Ms Stone’s attention another “single late declaration”, which was added to the scope of the investigation.”

He narrowly escaped censure, only when he apologised and promised to be more scrupulous in his conduct that led Ms. Stone hold, “Though Lammy had breached the code of conduct, there was no deliberate intention to mislead.”

In the best of British tradition and ingrained fair play, he was given the chance to answer the charges levelled against him and clear his good name. But did he give that same chance to the three men he unilaterally condemned from setting foot on British soil?

Did he give that same chance, which he himself had been lucky enough to get, thanks to Britain’s sense of fair play, to the three military men to answer wild allegations of human rights violations and clear their names? He didn’t.

Without any such niceties as shown to him by Stone, he outlandishly condemned the three named military men to the world’s reproach and disgrace, with the ignominious unfounded slur stamped forever on their passports.

Swayed by an innermost desire to be re-elected to the Palace of Westminster and fueled by wild fires of ambition to be exalted as Labour’s Foreign Secretary, Lammy stooped to conquer Tiger remnants holed up in his borough of Tottenham, with his vote winning promise for personal gain, to punish Sri Lanka’s military commanders by blindly treating LTTE claims of human rights violations and sexual perversities, supposedly perpetrated against northern civilians by these three men, as gospel truth, which would be blasphemous to contradict.

By any stretch of British justice, hallowed throughout the Commonwealth, can this be called British fair play?

If not nipped in the bud, there will be worse to come. International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) warned this week: ‘More Sri Lankans who are alleged of human rights violations and corruption have been recommended for target sanctions from the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe countries.’ A source from the ITJP said the human rights body has “submitted more information and names for other governments” for actions.

There’s an old Sinhala saying: ‘When the blacksmith sees the metal bends, he jumps up and hammers it.’

The Sri Lankan government, in its less than robust, somewhat lukewarm response, said that ‘such unilateral actions by countries do not assist but serve to complicate the national reconciliation process underway in Sri Lanka.’

The statement further said, “The government is in the process of strengthening domestic mechanisms on accountability and reconciliation, and any past human rights violations should be dealt with through domestic accountability mechanisms.”

Certainly those who committed war crimes by violating civilian human rights must be brought to justice before a competent court of jurisdiction.

But certainly not summarily tried in some embattled Tottenham kangaroo court, with some Tiger blindfolded lackey presiding as judge, jury and executioner.

Will a meek opposition ever inherit Sri Lanka?Whatever bravado the joint opposition had displayed earlier in Parliament disappeared into the nether on the arrival of the President to wind up the budget debate, six months to that exact day that marked his ascendency to the presidency.How meek the opposition has become in the presence of the executive president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, was graphically displayed last week in Parliament. Making a call to the opposition to lend their unstinted support to the government, the President, with the full force of his 159 MPs solidly behind him, dared anyone to name a single foreign investor that had left the country since he came to power. THE PRESIDENT IN PARLIAMENT: Budget debate’s winding up speech makes opposition mute If the name of Adani’s billion-dollar wind-power project, gone with wind two days before, ever came to anyone’s mind, it didn’t pass his pursed lips but remained stifled in muffled cacophonous silence. If the opposition, for all the mighty talk in the top cat’s absence, it’s best they brace themselves to be even more overawed next month. April’s New Year flowers bloom early for the President as he plays host to neighbour India’s Prime Minister Modi, who has condescended to leap across the Palk Strait pond to personally see how Little Brother is faring and increase his stature, not only in the South Asian region but islandwide in Lanka. Aluth Avurudhu rabban beats will tub thump hosannas of praise for Lanka’s Avurudhu Kumaraya while millions of avurudhu swings will, undoubtedly, sway towards their Avurudhu Prince to embrace and repose in him seasonal good wishes and cheer. Then, in the vast lake of the dominant religion of Lanka, millions of lotus buds will bloom and unfold their blessings on the President for his meritorious act that made it possible for them to behold the Sri Dalada exposition with their own eyes. Not even seven days of the Sri Dalada exposition ending, Anura Kumara, dabbed in sweet merits’ lingering fragrance, leads his party to the grassroots hustings to wrest control of the Pradeshiya Sabhas that lie on the political fringes, where beats the heart of the village peasant. Power from the grassroots to the pinnacle of Diyawanna’s Parliament, with the opposition in his pocket or on his leash, the President will have succeeded by mid-May, to stand in the sunny uplands of power, with the whole political establishment in his hands and absolute power vested in the JVP’s Pelawatte citadel. In such a daunting scenario, the question to be asked is: Will the meek opposition ever inherit Lanka?

Bimal jumps the gun and comes a cropperLeader of the House, JVP’s Bimal Ratnayake, came a cropper this week after jumping the gun on Monday to exclusively reveal to the nation the conclusive findings of an Air Force investigative committee report on last Friday’s plane crash in Wariyapola.The Air Force Commander, Air Marshal Vasu Bandu Edirisinghe, appointed a special seven-member investigation committee to conduct a full probe into the crash of its Chinese-built K-8 military jet in the early hours of Friday last week. The two pilots aboard the ill-fated craft had ejected to safety.Civil Aviation Minister Bimal Ratnayake rushed to the vicinity of the disaster on Sunday morning to deliver the report’s verdict. He tells the media, “I got down the report from the Defence Secretary. According to the report, there is no problem with the plane’s fuselage or the body. Secondly, there is no problem with the plane’s engine either. Though we run old vehicles on the roads, you cannot run planes like that. This is not an old plane. Though the plane did not carry an L board, those who went were trainees. They have made a mistake. JVP BIMAL: Divines report’s verdict However, on Tuesday, Air Force media spokesman Group Captain Eranda Geeganage confirmed to TV news channels, “The inquiry into the crash is still continuing, and the Air Force is yet to receive the investigative committee report. Not until then can the cause of the crash be determined.” Cabinet Spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa added at Wednesday’s cabinet briefing, “Once the report is received, the Secretary of the Ministry of Defence or another relevant authority will present the findings. As of now, the committee report has not been received.” So what made Bimal jump the gun? Did he ‘by mistake’ assume that the crash of a military aircraft came under his purview as the Minister of Civil Aviation? He should, perhaps, first learn the distinction between civil and military planes. Secondly, he should learn that the concept of ‘ministerial responsibility’ dictates that the minister takes bouquets of praise and the brickbats of blame, must take the applause and the boos for his ministry’s performance, and cannot only bask in the limelight when it is successful and cannot drag from hidden wings on stage his public officials to cringe under the spotlight glare when it is not. And if their failure is so gross, he must accept responsibility for their incompetence and, embracing their follies as his own, take the last bow and curtain call, sing his swansong, resign forthwith, and depart from the stage in stark disgrace, carrying the burden of another’s sins in silence to his grave. That’s the exacting toll Britain’s unwritten traditions levy on a minister who, while enjoying the privileges of office, shirks from efficiently discharging the entrusted duties of state. But for Bimal Ratnayake, jumping the gun and pinning the blame on the two pilots before the investigative report was out may have done him a world of good. After being appointed on the night of Friday’s plane crash, as Chair of the Sri Lanka-China Parliamentary Friendship Association for the Tenth Parliament at an event graced, no less, by the Chinese Ambassador, his Sunday plug for Chinese-built military aircraft would have, no doubt, boosted his image to the skies in Chinese eyes.