Sugath Samarasinghe   

He has admitted having received it (albeit within the confines of Parliamentary immunity). He is a good boy! But some questions remains to be clarified. How did he qualify to receive such a bonanza, unasked?

By this time. the donors had already done the first Bank robbery and the Government had prevented its formal disclosure, by dissolving Parliament. before the Gunasekera COPE report could be presented. Let us presume that Dayasiri in his innocence did not know that the donors of this Million Rupee cheque were the culprits among others. at that time. How could this innocent boy know that beforehand? Of course it remains coincidental that he was appointed to the new COPE Committee of the new Parliament. He could not have known that either when he received that cheque, though it was of course well known that he would be elected with a substantial majority. He would himself have not known that when he was elected, he would be on Unity Government side when some others crossed over to occupy the Opposition benches. So naturally when the robber Company called him later when things were getting hot again, he like a typical good boy he politely told them that he could not help. That, my friends is Integrity! But his conscience did not spur him to return the gift they had given him unasked! Neither did he decline to serve in the COPE committee since he had already received a retainer from the suspected robbers. Naturally, because any person is presumed innocent until he is proved guilty. Poor Mr. Ravi Karunanayke, another innocent, was made to give up his Ministerial post by an ungrateful UNP. Mr. K was so innocent that he did not even know that he was bribed!

Even after all this, MP Jayasekera did not feel the qualms of his conscience to declare that he had once received such a bonanza from a Bank robber. May be that was too much rectitude to be expected of politicians in our country unlike some of them in Australia. In our country too we have heard of Anil Moonasingghe who was then Chairman of the CTB who received as a gift of Volks Wagen car from a German Company with whom he had dealt with, handed it over to the CTB. That kind of personal Integrity is a far cry from today’s ilk.

Another matter of interest is that Mr. Jayasekera is such a clean man that he did not want to touch the filthy lucre with his own hands that he got his Security Officer to encash the cheque for him. Unfortunately for him the man squealed. And his ‘clean’ image became tarnished, if not for which he would have continued with his ‘cleanliness’.  He is so innocent in these matters that he forgot the elementary belief that most commonly held by all criminal as gospel : ”Never trust a policeman !

Sugath Samarasinghe