Editorial

As Christians around the world celebrate Easter Sunday today, the day is still overshadowed by the local Catholic Church hierarchy’s battle with successive governments seeking justice for the victims of the coordinated bombings of churches that fateful Easter morn in 2019.

Multiple investigations to find out who was behind these dastardly acts and the motive for them have only resulted in the fog of a war of words by conflicting forces and conspiracy theorists.

The entire campaign, led by the Cardinal, has needlessly got complicated—and politicised. Accusations, suspicions, cover-ups, misdirections—the entire mix already includes the identification of the culprits and the investigations moving to justify the claims, rather than the investigations independently finding out for themselves.

It is all clouded in local police investigations, commissions of inquiry with their findings and recommendations, and a US/FBI report that states it was a local group indoctrinated by the global ISIS (Islamic State) that inspired terror attacks worldwide—all of which are being challenged by different parties as being biased. Many even say—with absolute assurance—that a foreign spy agency was behind the serial attacks.

Political interference in investigating the local group behind the bombings started at a very early stage. Months prior to the bombings, this group, the National Thowheed Jama’ath (NTJ) led by Zahran Hashim, was under the radar of the TID (Terrorism Investigations Division) of the Police. Credit goes to the TID for monitoring the group’s activities since 2017 and obtaining an open warrant for the arrest of Zahran in 2018—eight months before Easter Sunday 2019. Even Interpol was flagged to issue a ‘Blue Notice’ to alert Police around the world for information on him.

Then, all of a sudden, the then Director of the TID spearheading the investigation was interdicted on an accusation that he was involved in a plot to kill the sitting President. There was no evidence of any such assassination plot to go to trial, and that was the end of the tracking of Zahran, the entire exercise dissipating and eventually stopping—until that Easter Sunday, when he and his crew blew themselves up with the bombings of the churches and hotels.

The fresh investigations will take time, and if pressure based on preconceived notions to serve some parochial political objectives continues, it will not serve the victims nor the national interest. The country’s intelligence branches will have to cease and desist from infighting in the meantime and instead up their game, as the adversaries are many. And realise that a Sunday is not an off day for those in the intelligence field.

MoUs with India: What’s to hide?

Indian PM Narendra Modi left the shores of Sri Lanka from the Anuradhapura ‘International’ airport after his official visit a fortnight back. Some of the Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) that were signed in Colombo have left behind an ambivalent aftertaste that lingers on.

Connectivity and ‘bridges’ between the two countries, factual and figurative, were a recurring strategic theme in the public messaging of his visit.

It is the ‘Energy Hub’ around Trincomalee harbour and the ‘Defence Cooperation’ MoUs that have raised uncomfortable questions in Sri Lanka post-Modi’s visit. And what is most intriguing is why, when the Indian PM himself and commentators in Delhi are gaga over the MoUs, the Sri Lankan President and his Government are maintaining a deafening silence—hiding them from the public.

The Foreign Minister seemed to speak for the Government by saying, ‘Go get them from an RTI application.’ That was an unprecedented thing to say.

For one thing, that is not how the party reacted in opposition when their predecessors signed MoUs and kept them secret. The other is their duty to keep the nation informed of what they are committing its people and future generations to. The citizen does not have to file an RTI (Right to Information) application to access such information, and the RTI Commission (RTIC) is strangulated anyway by this Government. Neither a chairman nor commissioners nor staff have been appointed for months. So much for the transparency in government and ‘system change’ that was pledged.  As commented in this space last week, to say the Attorney General endorsed the legality of these MoUs means very little. Did the Foreign Ministry also endorse the broader foreign policy, security or geopolitical fallout from it, which it is their duty to advise on? There was clearly no ‘Sherpa Diplomacy‘—like the Sherpas who carry the heavy load for Himalayan trekkers—diplomatic parlance for officials well versed in these subjects (not just the legality of them) studying the implications of these MoUs helping the politicians arrive at policy decisions, as should have been done ahead of the inking on the dotted lines.

There has been a clear line from the Sri Lankan side to downplay the significance of these MoUs with the argument that these remain MoUs and not agreements and that the Defence MoU is no more than a consolidation of existing collaboration. To think that India will allow these MoUs to fall by the wayside like many other MoUs gathering dust in the Presidential Office is to not understand the seriousness of the new geopolitical climate in the region and of India’s forceful ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy and its Maha Sagar policy.

A question that arises from the MoU is whether the JVP/NPP Government has agreed to define Sri Lanka’s national security as “interconnected and codependent” with India, as claimed by India. This is similar to Russia’s position that Ukraine’s security was interconnected and codependent on Russia’s.

India’s recent experience in pursuing this roadmap with similar integration projects in ‘connectivity clothing’ in the region has raised concerns in Nepal and Bangladesh already. These are lessons for Sri Lanka. Indo-Bangladesh relations exploded and Bangladesh imploded recently due to the strategic overloading of Indian ‘connectivity’ projects in Bangladesh. As anti-India feelings ran high, an ‘Aragalaya’-style’ popular uprising witnessed its Prime Minister, who was considered an Indian puppet, having to flee for personal safety to New Delhi and the protection of the Modi Government.

And so, India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy through its overbearing outreach using its newfound economic clout could well see it morphing into a ‘Neighbourhood Lost’ policy and have its local advocates left in the lurch.

It therefore behoves the President and his Government—if they have nothing to hide and have not been blindsided—to make public these MoUs. The longer they remain in secrecy, the greater the suspicion of a sell-out, and the jungle drum to this effect on the domestic front is getting louder over the possible suzerainty of Sri Lanka.