Sunday Bloody Sunday
but if you are not in charge of law and order, how are you the prime minister? Isn’t that the first job of a prime minister the security of the nation? Ranil’s reply as,’ Yes, and in the cabinet we are responsible for it but as you know law and order is a different minister.”
President Sirisena vowed on Tuesday night to shake up the security establishment and appoint new security forces heads within twenty four hours in a bid to ensure that there will be no more terror attacks or security lapses. Upto now it hasn’t happened. But when he gets down to it, perhaps it’s best he starts by firing the present Law and Order Minister and appointing a more experienced and competent person for the job than the one the nation presently pathetically has now.
Especially when Indian intelligence have issued a new warning that another NTJ team led by Jal al-Quital alias Rilwan Marzag could carry out more attacks. Noufar Moulavi, brother- in- law of Hashim, recently returned to Sri Lanka from Qatar and had taken charge of the group. At least this time before another devastating attack rips the land, it’s best to have one more efficient at the helm at the Ministry of Law and Order.
This week the best epitaph that was writ on the tombstone of Easter Sunday’s carnage came from Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera. Whilst condemning the attack, whilst condoling with the families of the dead, he also expressed his bitter regret that the [progress towards a more enlightened democratic state has now been retarded. Human rights and freedoms are now once more imperiled, he warned. This was also an attack on the economy. And we are back to where we started in January 2015.
What the President, the Prime Minister, the Opposition leader and MPs on both sides of the House is that they are singularly and collectively to blame for Sunday’s massacre of the innocents. In their obsession in maintaining power and gaining power, in their mad pursuit of increasing their perks and privileges, in their power struggles even flouting the constitution and bringing Parliament into contempt by their atrocious behaviour within the chamber, in the internecine warfare waged against the state, in their interest solely bent on themselves and not on the welfare of the people who elected them to power and Parliament they lost sight of that cardinal principle that ‘eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’.
No wonder Lanka became a sitting duck for a handful of suicidal fanatics to do their worst with so much ease.