{"id":87574,"date":"2026-03-29T18:18:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T22:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=87574"},"modified":"2026-03-29T22:05:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T02:05:43","slug":"87574","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=87574","title":{"rendered":"Kumara Jayakody Indicted Over Alleged Corruption Charges but Why is President Anura Kumara Dissanayake not taking Action Against his Energy Minister?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By<\/p>\n

Kishali Pinto- Jayawardene<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sri Lanka presented an embarrassment, not of \u2018riches\u2019 but of stinging pointers to the negation of the law and the Constitution during the past few weeks.<\/p>\n

The pesky problem of a Minister indicted for corruption<\/strong><\/p>\n

The tone deaf nonchalance of the National Peoples\u2019 Power (NPP) Government in shrugging off the indictment of its Energy Minister who continues in Cabinet office is truly astounding. The Minister concerned was indicted for corruption in regard to procurements when he served as the Procurement Manager of the Lanka Fertiliser Company by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption (CIABOC).<\/p>\n

From President Anura Kumara Dissanayake downwards, the trend is more towards following in the failed footsteps of previous Governments rather than steering the nation towards \u2018system change.\u2019<\/p>\n

The logic (or the absence thereof) in dealing with the pesky problem of a NPP Minister charged with corruption by a Government that wears its anti-corruption label less convincingly by the day, is to brush the charges off as being in relation to a \u2018procurement issue\u2019 that had occurred twelve years ago when he was a public official.<\/p>\n

Or so the President said when asked by journalists earlier this month during a special media briefing as to why this particular Minister remains in office. This was said unblushingly at the same time that President Dissanayake declared that he would not hesitate to remove any Minister from office \u2018the very next day\u2019 if he\/she is indicted before court for a \u2018fraud committed through the use of ministerial powers.\u2019 The contradiction is startlingly self-evident.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Distnctions wiithout a difference<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is the President making a distinction between \u2018public officials\u2019 and \u2018Ministers\u2019 in regard to the manner in which his Government would act when charges of corruption are brought? This is surely a distinction without a difference, if we are to be kind about it. Corruption is corruption, dare we say. It matters not the garb in which powers are exercised corruptly, ministerial or official as the case may be. The point is the precedent that this sets.<\/p>\n

One must acknowledge the remarkable chutzpah in which these blindingly contradictory positions are taken in one breath while claiming the high moral ground of being \u2018different\u2019 to previous Governments. <\/p>\n

This is much like the unbecoming antics of the President of the United States Donald Trump when he simultaneously asks allies of the global North for help in extricating himself from the quagmire that is the war against Iran which he initiated at the bequest of Israel while snarling that he does not need their help.<\/p>\n

But to reluctantly draw oneself away from Mr Trump\u2019s incoherently wild ramblings, the predicament of the NPP when faced with an indictment of its own Minister for corruption speaks to a certain element of poetic justice. <\/p>\n

Put bluntly, this is a Minister who has been charged with corruption while serving as a public officer and under whose current portfolio, serious allegations of corruption in the procurement of coal have arisen.<\/p>\n


\nLudicrous excuses and slipshod answers by the Government<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is in regard to low-quality coal purchased by the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) to power the Norochcholai Lakvijaya Power Plant which has now resulted in losses to the State estimated at Rs. 7.7 billion. Power cuts due to the procurement of inferior coal are now inevitable. <\/p>\n

That will be accompanied by an exponential rise in electricity costs to be borne by an increasingly enraged public. Who is responsible for this?<\/p>\n

Questions proliferate as to the limitation of the tender submission period and whether bidding documents were altered to prefer particular suppliers. Broadly, the pattern of allegedly corrupt procurement processes then and now points to a pattern. A frontline Minister has come to the rescue of his colleague to admit to the procurement of substandard coal but offer the payment of (minimum) penalties on the offending supplier as an answer.<\/p>\n

Ludicrously, the Sri Lankan public is told not to protest lest the company concerned declares bankruptcy which would \u2018disrupt\u2019 the country\u2019s coal supply. <\/p>\n

That is also cited as a reason why \u2018excessive penalties\u2019 have not been levied on the offender. So when the NPP Government chooses to treat its \u2018Coalgate\u2019 fiasco frivolously, the proverbial three monkeys who are blind, deaf and dumb come forcibly to mind. The country needs to see political accountability, not excuses.<\/p>\n

Judicial reprimands and procurement scandals<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was exactly what the Ranil Wickremesinghe government did in 2015-2019 when the \u2018Bond scam\u2019 controversy broke under its watch. Unconvincing explanations, engineered inquiry \u2018committees\u2019 to pronounce no fault on the part of the Wickremesinghe Government and its blue eyed Governor of the Central Bank (who is still evading arrest overseas), protesting UNP-ers claiming only a \u2018conflict of interest,\u2019 could not protect it from eventual electoral retribution.<\/p>\n

Peculiarly coincidentally, as the NPP\u2019s Energy Minister traipsed to court to record his fingerprints and get bail, Sri Lanka\u2019s Supreme Court handed down yet another of its famously declaratory judgments on another Minister. <\/p>\n

This time, it was the Health Minister of a previous Government who was hauled over the judicial coals for procuring health supplies from an unregistered company, in breach of standard procurement procedures, under an Indian Credit Line in 2022.<\/p>\n

Along with the Minister, several other public officials including the former Secretary to the Ministry of Health were ordered to pay compensation from their personal funds to the State, the amounts of which would no doubt be infinitesimal compared with the vastness of their ill-gotten gains. <\/p>\n

In handing down the ruling, Chief Justice Padman Surasena writing for the Court pointed to the \u2018arbitrary nature\u2019 in which the Minister and officials acted \u2018to deprive the State and the general public of the funds available for the well-being of citizens\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

Non-existent lines in the sand regarding accountability<\/strong><\/p>\n

He added that, \u2018the Respondents have done this when they are expected to discharge the powers conferred on them by the statutes only for the betterment of people\u2026\u2018if these Respondents do not understand the importance of their duties and obligations to the ordinary citizenry of this country, this Court has an obligation to remind them of the same.\u2019 In a nutshell, these judicial warnings give the obvious lie to the NPP\u2019s ill-judged rhetoric.<\/p>\n

In particular, this applies to President Dissanayake\u2019s attempt to distinguish between \u2018Ministers\u2019 and \u2018public officials\u2019 when trying to explain his Government\u2019s anti-corruption stand. I say \u2018ill-judged\u2019 due to the reason that, unlike his Ministers mouthing whatever nonsense that comes to mind, the President must be a little bit more circumspect when it comes to drawing non-existent lines in the sand regarding accountability.<\/p>\n

It is also unfortunate that the President thought it fit, in that same press conference, to claim that he had \u2018examined the impugned coal procurement process and found no \u2018corruption\u2019 as such but that \u2018full freedom\u2019 has been given to parliamentary bodies and to CIABOC to conduct investigations in regard to the allegations. It is high time that the President and his Ministers desist from proclaiming that they had given \u2018freedom\u2019 to Sri Lanka\u2019s institutional oversight bodies to act independently.
\n
\nRefreshers of how the present echoes the past<\/strong><\/p>\n

The NPP must be reminded that the arrest of the former Health Minister on Former Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella took place when he was a serving Cabinet Minister of the previous Government in connection with his alleged complicity in the procurement of substandard human intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG).<\/p>\n

Echoes of the past reverberate. At that point, the then Government protected its Health Minister in the very same way that the NPP Government now protects its Energy Minister.<\/p>\n

If a refresher was needed in regard to how \u2018the present\u2019 is a continuation of \u2018the past\u2019 despite flamboyant promises of \u2018system change,\u2019 there could not be a better illustration.<\/p>\n

\t:
\nCOURTESY; Sunday Times<\/strong><\/p>\n

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By Kishali Pinto- Jayawardene Sri Lanka presented an embarrassment, not of \u2018riches\u2019 but of stinging pointers to the negation of the law and the Constitution during the past few weeks. The pesky problem of a Minister indicted for corruption The tone deaf nonchalance of the National Peoples\u2019 Power (NPP) Government in shrugging off the indictment …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Kumara Jayakody Indicted Over Alleged Corruption Charges but Why is President Anura Kumara Dissanayake not taking Action Against his Energy Minister?’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87574"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87574"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87577,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87574\/revisions\/87577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}