Govt. claims Ranil might have prevented Gotabaya’s arrest
Friday, 20 March 2015 00:00
-
- {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The Government yesterday said that speculation concerning Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe preventing the arrest of former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa might have some truth in it.
While answering a question raised by the media at the weekly Cabinet briefing held yesterday in Colombo, Cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said that this story could be true.
“But our Prime Minister usually doesn’t give reasons for his actions or explain why. Therefore, most probably he must have said to wait a little while and to impound the former Defence Secretary’s passport. So according to the reports there could be some truth in that story,” Senaratne revealed.
Expressing his views regarding the controversial Central Bank Treasury Bond fiasco, Senaratne stated that in the future a better investigation would be carried out into the matter.
“When Arjuna Mahendran was going to be appointed Central Bank Governor I expressed my stance on the matter, and if what I said was taken into consideration then today we wouldn’t be in this situation,” he said.
Commenting about the protest staged by prominent Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) Parliamentarians outside the Central Bank recently, Senaratne added that it did not matter who staged the protest as long as their intentions were good.
At this meeting Minister Senaratne also admitted that the Government had been having issues with the current Defence Secretary while also declaring that the decision whether to remove the Defence Secretary from his present position was one which could only be taken by the Defence Minister.
Meanwhile, the Secretary to the Ministry of Mass Media and Information, Karunaratne Paranavithana, who was also present at the briefing, said that the Government had decided to include the Right to Information into the Constitution as a fundamental right of the people.
“This will enable the free flow of information regarding Government tenders, transactions, etc according to the 100-day program of the newly-elected regime. A fully-pledged RTI Commission will be responsible for executing the powers of the Act. The commission will appoint various officers from the President’s office down to the Divisional Secretariat level. It’s hoped that the public will make use of the provisions and wide awareness of their existence should be created. Once enacted, the RTI law will have limitations only in cases involving national security, ethical norms and individual privacy,” Paranavithana said.
