Govt. cannot escape blame for lapses regarding Easter Sunday attacks - PM

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) investigating the Easter Sunday attacks yesterday (Aug 6) that both the Cabinet and himself as PM cannot escape blame for lapses that allowed for the Easter Sunday attacks to take place.

By Sandun Jayawardana

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) investigating the Easter Sunday attacks yesterday (Aug 6) that both the Cabinet and himself as PM cannot escape blame for lapses that allowed for the Easter Sunday attacks to take place

"Under the Constitution, the Cabinet is in charge of the Government machinery. When there is a serious breakdown in the security apparatus, then we as the Government cannot run away from it," he noted. 

He stated that there had been a lapse in identifying the period where attack mastermind Zahran Hashim and his National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) moved from extremism to terrorism. 

He also revealed that neither he nor the PM's Security Division received an intelligence warning about an impending terrorist attack that was issued on April 9. 

Mr Wickremesinghe said the Inspector General of Police (IGP) had acknowledged that the warning had not been sent to the PM's Security Division. "If such a letter had come, I would have asked my Security Division what it meant," he told the PSC. 

Mr Wickremesinghe acknowledged that there was a "severe lapse in the national security apparatus" that resulted in the warning not reaching both the State Minister of Defence and himself. 

"I should have been informed of the contents of the letter sent on April 9...No one has been able to give me a satisfactory explanation as to why I was not informed," he remarked. 

However, the PM stopped short of blaming the rift between himself and President Maithripala Sirisena that came to a head during last year's Constitutional Crisis for the intelligence warning not being acted upon.

Regarding his relationship with the President, Mr Wickremesinghe said the relationship between him and the President who is also the Minister of Defence "is not as cordial as it was before," adding that this was why he supported the motion to set up a PSC to probe the attacks as he felt that it should be investigated by an independent Parliamentary body.