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| Aftermath of terrorist attacks at St Anthony's Church, Kochchikade, Colombo on April 21, 2019. |
Sri Lankan Church leaders have not taken seriously pre-poll pledges promising justice for the victims of the 2019 Eastern Sunday bombings that killed 273 people and hurt 500 others, most of them Catholics.
A record 38 candidates, including acting president Ranil Wickremesinghe, are eying some 1.2 million Catholic votes when 17 million voters head to polling booths on Sept 21 in the island nation, which went bankrupt in 2022 due to a massive foreign exchange crisis after a bloody three-decade civil war that ended in 2009.
“We have always demanded a transparent probe into the Easter Sunday attacks,” said Colombo archdiocese spokesperson Father Cyril Gamini Fernando.
Fernando noted that all the candidates vowed to ensure justice once they assumed office.
The Church leadership, however, has asked them to make their proposals public through election manifestos.
“If there is law and order, the perpetrators would have been brought before justice. The masterminds are still at large," Fernando said.
Three leading candidates — leader of the opposition Sajith Premadasa, Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the National Peoples’ Power and Namal Rajapaksa of the Sri Lanka Podhujana Peramuna — met with Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith last week and explained their plans. The cardinal heads Colombo archdiocese in the capital.
Wickremesinghe, who is trying his luck as an independent candidate, met with Bishop Harold Anthony Perera of Kurunegala, president of the bishops’ conference.
They discussed the Easter Sunday investigation, the president’s office said in a statement on Aug. 25.
Under a coalition government led by former president Maithripala Sirisena, Wickremesinghe served as the nation’s prime minister when three churches and three luxury hotels were targeted by alleged Islamic terrorists on April 21, 2019.
“We never openly support any candidate and will never do that,” Fernando said.
Meanwhile, minority political parties in the Tamil-dominated North and Eastern provinces that witnessed the civil war have decided to field a “common candidate” to register their protest against what they say is the government's failure to rehabilitate the conflict-stricken community 15 years after the war ended. There are many Catholics among the Tamil-speaking community in these two provinces, controlled of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The minority Tamil people have been duped by the majority Sinhala leaders, said Mahadeva Nilanthan, a Jaffna-based political analyst who is part of the initiative to field the “common candidate” from Tamil-dominated areas.
Votes for minority political parties will be a decisive factor this time, added Nilanthan.
Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanenthiran, a former lawmaker has been chosen as the “common candidate” by the Tamil parties and civil society organizations.
“Our purpose is to send a message to the whole world that Tamil people are still duped by the government,” Ariyanenthiran told UCA News.
Father C. G. Jeyakumar from Jaffna diocese observed that economic issues dominate the polls this time as the import-orient nation is getting its acts together with an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan which comes with many austerity measures.
Jeyakumar said the concept of the “common candidate” is bound to fail as Sri Lanka will not have a Tamil president in the nation of 22 million people.
In the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Sri Lanka, Buddhists make up about 70 percent, Hindus (12.6 percent), Muslims (9.7 percent), and Christians (7.4 percent), according to official statistics. (Rubatheesan Sandran/UCA News- Source)
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