Is President Directly Linked To Market Manipulation?
By Laksiri Fernando -August 26, 2012
Dr Laksiri Fernando
The recent crisis in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the official regulator of the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), speaks volumes of how the affairs of the country are managed or rather mismanaged by the present regime and its highest authority, the President. It was not one crisis, but one crisis after the other. On the issue of the recent resignation of Tilak Karunaratna, the outgoing Chairperson of the SEC, Frederica Jansz from theSunday Leader asked “So the President pressured you to resign?” The answer was “I am saying that the Minister of Finance was the person.” Then Jansz asked “The President is the Minister of Finance.?” The obvious answer was “Yes.”
The ‘pressure to resign’ that Karunaratna talked about was obviously against the investigations that the SEC was conducting on market manipulation, under his chairpersonship, on certain individuals and organizations including some broker companies, according to him and to other revelations. It was not about his incompetence or incapacity as a Chairperson. After all he was appointed by the same authority, the President as the Minister of Finance, just few months back in January 2012.
The above are the reasons why there are genuine suspicions whether the President himself is linked, directly or otherwise, to what Karunaratna said about the Market Mafia. If he is not, then why does he want to stop investigations on the market manipulators or safeguard them by pressuring Karunaratna to resign?
