D-Day for Govt. to do

It is starting to look like falling into danger of being the third successive government to mismanage bringing the plethora of investigations to date to a conclusive, satisfactory and justice-delivering closure

Today is D-Day for a still tyro government to stop only saying what it would do and simply get cracking on meaningful action long overdue. It is a time for doing, and a time for refraining from an excess of empty words. And if the National People’s Power does not deliver on a Delivery-Day (D-Day) of its own making and promising, the people will have little choice left but to lament on the ash heap that the NPP has lost more than its early promise of late... 

Early promise

On 17 April 2024, the JVP-led NPP government released a charter promising that under its auspices justice would be delivered to victims of the Easter Sunday terror attacks.

Addressing a press conference, the NPP Executive Council (EC) said the party decided to publish the charter because consecutive governments had failed to deliver justice to those affected by the black Easter bombings of 21 April 2019.

“Two hundred and seventy-three lives were lost and over 500 people were injured. Even today, leaders responsible for failing to prevent the attack are treating it as a joke. Five years later, they still consider it as an insignificant event,” charged NPP EC member attorney-at-law Sunil Watagala.

He said that the NPP charter primarily focussed on bringing criminal charges against persons such as former president Maithripala Sirisena, who were found to be at fault by the Supreme Court for failing to prevent the attacks and implementing the recommendations made by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Easter Sunday strike.

“Under an NPP government, we pledge to deliver justice and pursue criminal charges against those responsible,” he said.

The charter outlined seven key promises – including efforts to apprehend the masterminds behind the attack, expedite the ongoing legal cases related to the bombings as a priority, seek the repatriation of any suspects currently absconding abroad, and establish a comprehensive compensation system to support the victims and their families. 

The NPP charter also included a promise to establish a special commission of investigation to conduct further inquiries into the attacks, seeking to identify any additional individuals who may be responsible and ensure that they are held accountable under the law – in fact, punished within a short period of time.

This ‘crime and punishment’ motif was underscored in an interview published on social media in which then JVP MP and now NPP Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath was unequivocal about a future National People Power government’s approach to peace with justice for a nation reeling under the cruel blows that the Easter massacre dealt the body politic.

“As soon as a government led by us comes into power, we will set up a special presidential commission of inquiry and not only assimilate all previous reports of probes into the Easter Sunday attacks but initiate further necessary investigations of our own. In a short period of time, we will mete out the due punishments in accordance with the fullest extent of the law.” 

Herath also insinuated in his ‘Conversation with Alanki’ (YouTube, some 11 months ago) that forces partisan to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had agency in instigating the attacks, which were instrumental in bringing the erstwhile strongman into power on a national security ticket. “They did it to bring him into power,” he asserted, pulling no punches, adding, “and after he was elected, they protected the perpetrators and placed stumbling blocks in the path of the probe.” (Translated)  

The NPP also critiqued the governments of Rajapaksa and subsequently Ranil Wickremesinghe for failing to mete out justice for those who had lost their lives, provide proper restitution for members of the victimised families and offer compensation for the loss of or damage to property.

In its seven-point charter, the NPP alleged that the Easter Sunday attacks of 2019 including a spate of suicide bombings and foiled bomb explosions were all part of a conspiracy to fulfil a political motive. 

It also affirmed that it was a matter of top priority for the NPP government to bring to book the chief mastermind behind the attack, as well as his or her conspirators.

The NPP further asserted that legal action would be taken against those who failed to prevent the attacks despite intelligence reports of the imminent attack and especially against state security officials who prevented action being taken against the perpetrators by diverting investigations into the attacks.

It was very clear then that a future NPP government would take stern action against political authorities and state officials responsible for the attacks or who were complicit in covering up an alleged conspiracy. 

Latter-day non-events

Today, it is as clear that “something happened” to the best-laid plans of mice and men. No word today has proceeded from the lips or offices of President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka – who, as late as less than a month ago, promised to “reveal names of Easter Sunday attack perpetrators by April 21st” (News1st, 30 March 2025). Why wait, AKD? Timing? Expediency? A misplaced sense of heightening dramatic effects? 

Not only has the suspected grand conspiracy behind the devastation not been unveiled but no alleged mastermind behind the larger scheme of things been dragged into the public sphere. And there are plenty of candidates – from disgraced former chief executives to dismissed directors of military intelligence – to serve as scapegoats or true sacrifices to salve bleeding justice lying in the church gutter.

But for the arrest of a former lieutenant of the defeated LTTE supremo and lately reinvented ‘war hero’, there has been no significant breakthrough in the spate of investigations to date. And a wounded – and yet, for all its pain, hungry for truth – citizenry can only dare hope that behind the arrest of Pillaiyan (under the dreaded and draconian PTA, no less) there is rhyme and reason in that even a detention for one cloak and dagger crime can yield confessions of another.

And even though the Roman Catholic Church in Sri Lanka remains staunch in its conviction that it knows who the mastermind is – it, too was unequivocal about this in an interview published on 27 March 2024 in The Morning Telegraph (“Catholic church declares Gota as ‘mastermind’ of Easter bombings”) – other players implicated in the string of serious security lapses, omissions and dereliction of duty continue to muddy the much bloodied water. Such as in the request of a former president and prime minister to be granted access to Pillaiyan, perhaps the corroded key most likely to unlock the darkest secrets of the deep state... 

Quo vadis?

It is clear the NPP had no part to play in masterminding the Easter Sunday attacks. Though it is starting to look like falling into danger of being the third successive government to mismanage bringing the plethora of investigations to date to a conclusive, satisfactory and justice-delivering closure. Shall we deride it more for being arrogant and overconfident in its assertions then, or fumbling and bumbling in its evasive glances and perplexing silences now?

Today is a D-Day for the NPP every which way. Stand and deliver! Let’s hope and trust – yes ... that old hat, once again – that between dawn on the morning of the sixth anniversary of that Sunday’s carnage of 2019 and sundown on Easter Monday 2025, the government can pull the promised rabbit out of its hat. 

(Editor-at-large of LMD | Fiat lux)