Govt. exposed over Sil clothing case!
Mar 10, 2017
The media has reported that the charges of misuse of Rs. 600 million of TRC money during the last presidential election leveled against former secretary to the president Lalith Weeratunga and ex-TRC director general Anusha Pelpita under the Public Property Act will be amended to file criminal misuse charges as per provisions in the penal code.
The charges are to be amended at the request of Kanchana Ratwatte and Kalinga Indatissa, who appear for the respondents.
If they are accused of criminal misuse under the penal code, it should be proven that they have received financial gains from the money in question. It is clear that none of the two have gained anything financially from the distribution of Sil material at the TRC’s expense in order to gain votes for Mahinda Rajapaksa. Therefore, what will happen at the next hearing will be that the two accused will be acquitted.
That means that the two rascals will go scot free without the law finding anyone responsible for their having used such a massive sum of state money for the political gain of the ex-president. The worst result from that will be that this will be a very bad precedence to any of the cases already filed or to be filed under the public property act and to be heard by the high court. The loopholes of the law that will open up for Lalith and Anusha will next open up for Basil and Namal. What will happen then is that due to the games being played by the government, Basil and Namal will be cleared of the charges and become national heroes.
There is a separate act by the name public property act in order to prevent state authorities from misusing public money and to mete out punishment for any misuse. But, if the legal process into any misuse of public money spent for political gains can be tampered with, such a country will eventually have its laws ridiculed before the eyes of its people and will pave the way for the breeding of leeches to suck the lifeblood out of public property. The government that brags about its good governance should explain as to why it takes up concerns of public property this lightly.
