At the UNP’s Sirik-otha Headquarters yesterday, the Prime Minister allowed reporters to observe a briefing he had requested from party members who also sat on COPE – MPs Sujeewa Senasinghe, Eran Wickramaratne and Rosy Senanayake.
The MPs told the Premier at the briefing that the ‘report’ being circulated by Gunesekera was a document summarising nearly 400 pages of evidence gathered during the COPE probe of the Central Bank bond scandal.
Three drafts of the same document had been circulated among COPE members on Thursday 25 June, one day before Parliament was dissolved, Senasinghe told the Prime Minister.
UNP members in the Committee had challenged some sections of the document, but Gunesekera had been unyielding insisting that the report be tabled in Parliament, even though there was no agreement, Senasinghe claimed.
He added that COPE sub committees could not report to Parliament but only to the main committee, which was empowered to put facts before the Members of the House.
Senasinghe said he was planning to take legal action against the former COPE Chairman about his violation of proceedings and partisan conduct.
Former MP Wickramaratne told the Prime Minister that several members of COPE had been absent at Friday’s meetings and never even saw the three drafts the Chairman had put forward.
“In an investigation like this, there cannot be an interim report, because this is one issue we are going into and you can only issue an interim report based on completed facts,” the former banker told the Premier.
