Ira de Silva Canada

The Prime Minister of Sri Lanka is giving interviews to foreign news media regarding the bombings on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka. He tried to tell the world that he did not know that there were warnings given to Sri Lankan authorities prior to the bombings.

To the BBC it was that he was “not in the loop”. This was not acceptable to the interviewer and the Prime Minister then backed down and gave a vague response of the government knowing something. In another interview when he tried to indicate that he did not know, when challenged, he had to backtrack and claimed partial knowledge but would not accept responsibility.

Perhaps he was afraid that the next question to him would have been why he did not resign which would have happened in the country the interviewer came from.

What he did was to re-enforce to the world that Sri Lanka has a government that is dysfunctional, completly oblivious of and uncaring of what is taking place in the country that even when there is such a tragic incident, it does not take the incident seriously and is not taking adequate steps to investigate and stop any further terrorist attacks.

The people of Sri Lanka who are dying because of the governments complacency regarding terrorism do not accept this attitude neither does the outside world.  The Cardinal is correct when he states “even if Parliamentarians and politicians were behind these attacks – directly or indirectly – people expect them to be arrested, questioned and punished if they have any connections”. Sadly, although that is what needs to be done, the people of Sri Lanka know that this government is not capable of thinking in this manner much less acting to stop this terrorrism because of incompetence and political expediency