Public Security Minister gets dressing down on favouring some and not others

Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekara was again put on the defensive by the Opposition this week over his now infamous intervention on behalf of a popular model and her associates who were taken to quarantine after attending a party at a five star Colombo hotel recently.

Minister Weerasekara, under whose purview comes the police, came under attack by Opposition MPs on Friday over the arrests and subsequent forced quarantine of activists who had protested against the Kotelawala National Defence University Bill. Among those arrested and taken to quarantine was Ceylon Teachers’ Union General Secretary Joseph Stalin.

Opposition MPs questioned on what grounds police were taking protesters who had been granted bail by courts, off to quarantine centres.

“You know that some female protesters' clothes were tor n during the arrests. Yet, your heart warmed to the plight of certain other women who underwent a similar experience. That is human nature. There’s nothing wrong with that. What is wrong however, is that you don’t seem to have the same consideration for other women,” National People’s Front ( NPP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake stated.

Minister Weerasekara, who had been on the defensive several times in the past over the incident involving the female model, accused the Opposition of trying to distort facts. “It was the woman’s lawyer who contacted me first and said the group did not have items they needed. I merely conveyed that to the Inspector General of Police. If I had done the same on this occasion, you would have accused me of taking clothes for Stalin. That’s why I did not intervene,” the minister claimed.