JVP leader AKD ‘hears devil chanting pirith’ in Parliament’
By Saman Indrajith
JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake told Parliament, on Friday, that Chief Government Whip, Urban Development and Housing Minister Prasanna Ranatunga, speaking against corruption, was similar to the devil citing the scriptures.Participating in the adjournment debate on President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s policy statement, Dissanayake said that nobody believed that the Ranil-Rajapaksa government could end corruption.
“I saw Minister Prasanna Ranatunga speaking of corruption, several minutes ago. His speech brought to my mind a Tamil saying, which says Sathan vedham odu karathi, which is loosely translated as devil is reading scriptures,” Dissanayake said.
“How could the President ensure a corruption-free country while Minister Ranatunga is there in the Cabinet in spite of having been found guilty by the High Court and fined and given a suspended jail term. He has a right to go before the Court of Appeal. That is his right but that is a different matter.”
Then there is Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva. He had to resign from the Cabinet because President Gotabaya Rajapaksa asked him to do so. There are many reports of ministers taking bribes, but we cannot remember an instance where a President asked the ministers being accused to resign. President Rajapaksa asked Minister de Silva to resign because the complaint of demanding a 200-million-rupee bribe from Japan’s Taisei Company came, via a top-level diplomatic channel. The incumbent President made Nimal Sirirpala a Minister, stating that his name had been cleared by a committee.
Where on earth a complaint of bribe demanding is probed by an ad hoc committee? That committee, headed by Kusala Sarojini, did not have a mandate for that purpose. I am telling this House, with full responsibility, that it was Nimal Siripala de Silva himself who asked President Wickremeisnghe to appoint Kusala Sarojini as the head of that committee. The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government is talking of ending corruption while harbouring such elements in the Cabinet. None would take this government’s words seriously. Look at the list of Presidential advisors being appointed.
We are not against persons, with knowledge and expertise, being appointed as presidential advisors because their experience is needed to develop the country. Akila Wiraj Kariyawasam, Ashu Marasinghe and Sagala Ratnayake have been appointed as presidential advisors. I ask the President what expert advice he could seek from these advisors. President Wickremesinghe counts 45 years of Parliament career and he has appointed Ashu Marasinghe as his advisor on Parliamentary Affairs. What does Marasinghe know more than Wickremesinghe on parliamentary affairs? Who would expect an end to corruption from this government?”
