Bridge Initiative clarifies the Elections Chief’s speech

Referring to a story under the heading “Most Sinhalese happy about recent riots: EC” published in the Daily Mirror, the Bridge Initiative (BI) said yesterday that the story failed to put Elections Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya’s short speech in its proper context, and was misleading and exaggerated.

The story referred to a speech made by Mr. Deshapriya in his personal capacity at a workshop organized by the Bridge Initiative, a civil society movement which has as its objective in bringing together influential Sri Lankan citizens into a dialouge with the view to create mutual understanding, harmony and peace.

BI co-convenors M.s.m.suhair and A.s.mohamed said in a statement that the invitees to the workshop consisted of a cross section of people speaking different languages and belonging to different faiths, who wanted to clear misunderstandings and bring about inter-faith unity and added that the workshop was not open to the public, and its deliberations were expected to be frank and candid to be effective and fruitful.

The statement said that the Daily Mirror article not only violated the confidentiality of’ the deliberations as the workshop was not open to the press and expressed its regret to Mr. Deshapriya in regard to this publication. During his speech Mr. Deshapriya was of the view that no true Sri Lankan can be happy with such incidents which resulted in loss of life, immense damage to property which had to be addressed by civil society to prevent similar occurrences, it added.