{"id":247940,"date":"2026-07-05T01:00:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T19:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=247940"},"modified":"2026-07-05T01:01:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T19:31:57","slug":"the-npps-new-challenge-balancing-easter-lawfare-economic-welfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-npps-new-challenge-balancing-easter-lawfare-economic-welfare\/","title":{"rendered":"The NPP\u2019s New Challenge: Balancing Easter Lawfare & Economic Welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rajan Philips<\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

Rajan Philips<\/p><\/div>\n

Sri Lanka has long been called a welfare state. Some of the welfare attributes were compromised in the less regulated open economy after 1977, but the welfare core of the state has remained intact. Between 1977 and 2009, Sri Lanka was also a warfare state. Although the war ended in 2009, the state has retained some of its warfare attributes. Yet the state\u2019s warfare defenses could not prevent the devastating easter Sunday attacks that came ten years after the war, on Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019. The continuing fallouts from the easter attacks even after six years are forcing the state to wear a new mantle and become a lawfare state in addition to being a welfare state.<\/p>\n

Put another way, the NPP government is facing a new challenge \u2013 navigating the ship of state on an even keel between easter lawfare and economic welfare. Politically, an act of tightrope walking, addressing easter lawfare demands while attending to the country\u2019s welfare expectations. I use the term lawfare in its most positive sense, which is the application of the laws of a country against its own miscreant state officials, both elected and unelected. It is an appropriate term to describe the spate of easter litigations that have been initiated from the very day of the attacks, but mostly in fits and starts and remaining in various stages of inconclusiveness.<\/p>\n

Post Easter Lawfare State<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to their shocks and sorrows, the 2019 easter attacks have created the most numerous and the most lengthy legal proceedings in the country\u2019s judicial history. More than 90 court cases have been spawned by the horror that was perpetrated on that single Sunday, and most of them are said to be still in their initial stages. The oldest of them that began in January 2022, with the indictment of 25 suspects (now reduced to 24 after the death of one suspect in hospital) over 23,270 charges, is still going on as a High Court Trial-at-Bar case. At its latest hearing on 23 June, the Court ruled that the confession give to police by Naufer Maulavi, the first accused in the case and identified as a \u2018mastermind\u2019 in Sri Lanka, was voluntary and admissible.<\/p>\n

The NPP government has given a new impetus and better organization to what has been a rather reluctant and disorganized litigious process under the administrations of its three predecessors \u2013 Sirisena, Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe. The NPP government\u2019s lawfare goes well beyond prosecuting Easter Sunday crimes and it tries to cover all known and unknown instances of state and government corruption, including those involving some of its own members and officials.<\/p>\n

The recent high-profile arrests of Rakitha Rajapakshe, son of former minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, and Charith Abeysinghe, the SJB organiser for Horana are symptomatic of the new lawfare state. The allegations against them also underscore the public perceptions of well established linkages between the country\u2019s criminal underworld and its sociopolitical upperworld. The across the board spate of arrests that go beyond easter lawfare are triggering questions and speculations about the \u2018police masterminds\u2019 behind the state lawfare and whether they are also close to solving any of the City\u2019s long unsolved emblematic murders \u2013 extending from the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge (2009), through Wasim Thajudeen (2012) to Dinesh Schaffter (2022), among others.<\/p>\n

The politics of the current lawfare process is still unfolding. The government\u2019s calculation would seem to be that its lawfare is popular with the people. To that extent, the government is unconcerned about the chattering classes who may be having difficulty in holding their noses at the swift arrests of once powerful people. The challenge for the government is two fold. First, the lawfare thrust should yield results and they should come not too late for electoral rewards. All arrests and no conviction will not be a good political story for this government or any government.<\/p>\n

Second, and more important, the government must consistently find a balance between the lawfare and the welfare objectives of the state. All lawfare and no welfare will be a disastrous story for the government in an election, whenever and whichever of them the government may choose to call: provincial, parliamentary, or even presidential.<\/p>\n

In fairness to the NPP government, unlike its predecessors, it has also taken the responsibility to bring humane closures to legacy tragedies such as the mass graves at Chemmani and other locations, as well as the Batalanda torture house. The Minister of Justice, Harshana Nanayakkara, deserves mention and praise for visiting Chemmani last month and announcing in parliament the government\u2019s undertaking to engage international forensic assistance for DNA identification of the human remains after the current excavation phase is completed.<\/p>\n

So far, 412 human skeletons have been recovered in what is the country\u2019s largest mass grave, where previous governments insisted that there was nothing more to look for after the first few remains were accidentally discovered. Minister Nanayakkara went on to say in parliament: \u201cWhen I visited the site last week, I understood the process is very extensive and very emotional for the local community there. People are waiting for justice. We will reveal the truth soon; there is no need for us to protect anyone or conceal the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Revealing the truth, and not concealing it to protect someone, is what defines lawfare in the Sri Lankan context. To its credit, the main opposition party SJB is not opposing the spate of arrests, except to legitimately warn the government that it should not use arresting people as a political ruse for economic inaction. The only opposition to NPP\u2019s lawfare seems to be located in the little universe of three former presidents, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena, their families, followers and cheerleaders. Whatever political clout the three former presidents might be having is clearly not scaring the NPP government.<\/p>\n

As for the fourth former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the accidental one, and also the immediate post Easter President, he is fighting his own battle in court to avoid happening to him what has happened to his former Director of the State Intelligence Services (SIS), Retired Major General Suresh Sallay. Sallay was arrested on 25 February and has since been named a suspect in the probe into the easter attacks. Mr. Rajapaksa has not been identified as a suspect but the courts have banned him from travelling abroad. The two men have become the biggest targets of the NPP\u2019s easter lawfare.<\/p>\n

The NPP government\u2019s reopening of the investigation into the easter attacks has raised questions in interested circles about the need for the new reopening when there is an already completed international investigation by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Editorial opinions have asked the government to declare its position on the FBI report and its conclusions. The FBI report is taken to be the last word on the matter, and so, why start another investigation. This argument goes round in circles, but more on that later.<\/p>\n

Former President Ranil Wickemesinghe has reportedly inquired if the NPP government has approached Washington to get a copy of the FBI report. Such a question is typical of RW, but it also betrays the cavalier attitude of the four former presidents towards finding the truth and the whole truth about the easter attacks. Why should the NPP government ask Washington for the FBI Report? Hasn\u2019t Ranil Wickremesinghe or his two predecessors obtained copies of the FBI Report and left them as part of government documentation?<\/p>\n

The more political question that is being asked is whether the reopening is only meant to placate the leaders of the Catholic Church who have been insistent on a full and transparent investigation of the easter attacks. The social media has been deployed to attack the Church leaders. Specific concerns about bias and fairness have been raised about the role of senior police officers Shani Abeyesekara and Ravi Seniviratne in the reopened investigation in light of their past involvement in the investigation and their apparent association with the NPP\u2019s election campaign.<\/p>\n

The government seems confident in the lawfare approach it is taking and in the individuals who are masterminding it. Their confidence would appear to be supported by the chronology of events, their political context, the varying efforts as well as the lack of them by President Sirisena, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and President Ranil Wickremasinghe to investigate the attacks and their preparations, the restrictively scoped investigation of the FBI, and the open ended state of the investigation and litigation inherited by the NPP government.<\/p>\n

Background to Lawfare<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are two parts to the facts about the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks. The physical execution part, as well as the prior official awareness about the attacks and the official failure to prevent the attacks. The execution of the attacks and its perpetrators are now well known and there is no controversy about the facts involved. Yet, except for those who killed themselves, the legal proceedings against the organizing perpetrators are all in a state of inconclusive suspension. On the other hand, there has been no sustained, thorough and conclusive investigation of the failure of the elected and unelected government officials who knew about the impending attacks and did nothing to prevent them. The arrest of Suresh Sallay and the travel ban on Gotabaya Rajapaksa point to a new third dimension \u2013 and that is, in addition to the failure to act on available intelligence, there may have been real collusion between the perpetrators of the attack and elected\/unelected officials in the government.<\/p>\n

The easter attacks were immediately blamed on the government\u2019s failure to act on the intelligence provided by Indian government agents, as well as preceding failures of previous governments to take action against the organizations and individuals who executed the attacks, and who were all known to government security and intelligence officials. At the time of the attack, President Sirisena was on a weekend sojourn in Singapore. His administration was already dysfunctional and more so in the aftermath of his lamebrained constitutional coup, a few months earlier, to get rid of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.<\/p>\n

The intelligence failure preceding the attack was in part due to this dysfunctionality. I say in part because of the recent courtroom submissions by government lawyers that there is also plausible evidence about collusion. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe charmingly claimed that he had been kept out of national security briefings by the President, and therefore he was not to be blamed. As the old Milton\u2019s line goes \u2013 he too serves who only stands and waits. After the attacks, President Sirisena initiated investigations which were mostly intended to conceal his own failures and to blame others.<\/p>\n

Sirisena first appointed a Presidential Committee of inquiry that turned out to be bad in law and worse in its findings. The Presidential Commission of Inquiry that he appointed later turned out to be more productive but its findings have become known more in secret channels than in the public domain. Sirisena steadfastly opposed the work of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) that inquired into the attacks and even tried to prevent intelligence officers from appearing before the Committee. The Parliamentary Committee named names of senior security and intelligence officials for their failure and the PSC Report became the basis for court challenges and fundamental rights petitions.<\/p>\n

Apart from the presidential and parliamentary inquiries, police investigations of the attacks and the apprehension of suspects began no sooner than the attacks were over. Hundreds were arrested in a matter of days that led to the obvious questions about the failure of the government to apprehend them earlier. Prominent Muslim leaders complained that they had been warning different government leaders about extremist activities in their community but their warnings were ignored and nothing was done about them.<\/p>\n

Ironically, it was only after the attacks that local Muslim connections to global Islamic extremism became the dominant narrative even as it was used as a convenient pretext to obfuscate the otherwise obvious domestic political ingredients in the attack. This is the context in which the FBI investigation of the easter attacks and its reported conclusions have been made to loom large to the point of suppressing all \u2018local truths\u2019 that are pertinent to the easter attacks and all of its antecedents.<\/p>\n

Anyone who reads the 11 December 2020 Affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Merrilee R. Goodwin in the US District Court in California, would recognize that the scope of the affidavit, and all the facts thereto, are limited to establishing that the three perpetrators named in the affidavit (Mohamed Naufar, Mohamed Anwar Mohamed Riskan and Mohamed Milhan Hayathu Mohamed), besides those who killed themselves in the attacks, were guilty of violating specific US laws in collaborating with a \u201cforeign terrorist organization\u201d, namely, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Nothing more, nothing less.<\/p>\n

There is no mention in the affidavit about the Sri Lankan intelligence failure before the attacks. In other words, the FBI findings are not the last source to determine the whole local truth about the easter attacks. Add to that, the investigations into finding the truth that began soon after the easter attacks were thoroughly stymied after Gotabaya Rajapaksa became President in November 2019. Then CID Director Shani Abeyesekara who was spearheading the investigations was demoted, transferred, arrested and detained apparently on false charges. Abeyesekara\u2019s allegations included in his fundamental rights petition to the Supreme Court were supported by then Senior DIG Ravi Seneviratne.<\/p>\n

By the time the Channel 4 revelations came in September 2023, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was gone and Ranil Wickremesinghe was the interim President. Channel 4 did not reveal anything new that was not already known and suspected in Sri Lanka. But it jolted the powers that be once again to take some action. President Wickremesinghe responded, not by helping to clear the waters but by appointing two more inquiry commissions to add to the murkiness. Neither of them shed any new light and a potential conflict of interest has been alluded to one of them.<\/p>\n

This was the state of affairs when elections came and the NPP was elected with the promise, among a host of other promises, to get to the truth, and all of it, behind the easter attacks. Those who question the NPP\u2019s easter lawfare alacrity now, may do well to reflect on a different and perhaps more pertinent question. And that is, if there is nothing to hide, why did not the three previous administrations of Maithripala Sirisena, Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe, conduct credible and convincing investigations and prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there is in fact nothing more to know than what is included in the FBI report?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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