The JVP yesterday blasted President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for betraying the people’s mandate given on January 8th as both of them had failed to prevent former President Mahinda Rajapaksa from making a comeback.
Addressing the media at the party head office, JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake said that former President Rajapaksa and his ‘corrupt’ administration had been politically defeated by the people at the presidential election, but the Maithri-Ranil administration had allowed the Rajapaksas to return to politics without taking action against their wrongdoing.
He said that finally President Sirisena had allowed Rajapaksa to contest the general election on the UPFA ticket.
“Allowing Rajapaksa to contest the general election will not be approved by the people as the public voted for Sirisena on Jan. 08 to end the corrupt administration of Rajapaksa,” Dissanayake said, adding that the Rajapaksa clan now had launched the campaign again to establish a corrupt regime.
President Sirisena’s recent speech however should be appreciated because it revealed that he had called for the resignation of the Central Bank Governor over the bond scandal, the JVP leader said.
Dissanayake said that President’s comment on the bond issue had proved that such a corrupt deal had actually happened.
He said that the UNP, too, was silent on the corrupt acts of Rajapaksa regime and they did not expedite investigations into the corrupt deals under the Rajapaksa regime.
“Our members gave details to the CID regarding the cases filed against Rajapaksa, but those probes were moving very slowly,” the JVP leader said, adding that the JVP had lodged the highest number of complaints against corrupt acts of the previous government with the CID, the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption and the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka.
Dissanayake said that Rajapaksa had ruined not only the country but also the SLFP.
The late S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike had formed the SLFP based on the ‘Pancha Maha Balawegaya’, but Rajapaksa converted it to a party of drug dealers, ethanol agents, bar owners, rapists and criminals, he alleged.
Dissanayake said that Rajapaksa had not groomed a successor. Instead, he was trying to deprive other party seniors of premiership, the JVP leader said.