Namal alleges JVP-led govt. protecting Easter attack culprits

Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) national organiser and parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa accused the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-led government of systematically concealing the true records of the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks and protecting the officials responsible for those failures, while simultaneously imprisoning intelligence officers who had led the country to military victory over terrorism.

Speaking at a public rally in Kekirawa yesterday (07), he declared that the present government was not pursuing a national agenda but rather serving the interests of the diaspora.

'A spineless government that can't even call our war heroes by name.'

Turning to what he described as the government's failure to honour the country's war veterans, Rajapaksa said it came as no surprise that an administration shaped by the JVP — a movement that in the late 1980s took up arms against both the state and the military — was incapable of recognising those who sacrificed their lives in service of the country.

He pointed to villages like Kekirawa, where young men had gone to war to defend the country against the LTTE.

The current rulers, he said, could not even bring themselves to call those men war heroes, cowed by pressure from diaspora groups overseas.

'Govt protects importers, not farmers'

Rajapaksa recalled that under the decade-long Mahinda Rajapaksa government, a bag of fertiliser had been made available at Rs. 350.

That same quantity, he said, now changes hands on the black market for between Rs. 18,000 and Rs. 25,000, a more than fiftyfold increase.

He accused ruling party MPs who once waded through paddy fields and ate young rice shoots as political theatre of having entirely forgotten the farming community upon coming to power.

The government's true objective, he charged, was not to protect the domestic farmer but to enrich a small circle of businessmen who profit from importing goods from abroad.

'We made mistakes but we will never betray this nation.'

Rajapaksa acknowledged that the SLPP's time in government had not been without fault.

He admitted that certain decisions had been politically damaging to the party, and the opposition had exploited those shortcomings to paint an unfair picture in the public mind.

"We are ready to correct our mistakes. But we will never be traitors to this country or this nation. We did not win votes through lies. Today's government opens its mouth and tells only lies," he said.