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By Sandun Jayawardana 

Thursday’s Parliamentary debate on the government’s “National Programme to Eradicate Drugs and Organised Crime and Strengthening the Legal Framework” was overshadowed by the assassination of Weligama Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman Lasantha Wickramasekara the previous day.  

The government had already labeled the assassination to be the result of a conflict between underworld groups, with Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala describing the late PS Chairman as an “underworld criminal.” That assertion was condemned by both the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), to which Mr Wickramasekara belonged to, and many other opposition parties. Many SJB and other opposition MPs wore black in Parliament on Thursday to protest the assassination.

“When someone is killed, the usual custom is to express sympathy first, yet the Public Security Minister did not even have that basic sense of decency when he linked the Weligama PS Chairman with organised crime at the very outset,” SJB Colombo District MP Mujibur Rahman told the House. Worse still, the government tried to justify the killing, he added. “I am ashamed to sit in the same Parliament as you,” Mr Rahman told the minister. If Mr Wickramasekara was indeed a criminal as claimed by the minister, then he should have been arrested and brought before the law, the MP pointed out.

The drug menace has today spread to every corner of the country and all sections of society, Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala said. There were those in both the police and the armed forces who had become addicted to drugs, as well as among school and university students. While the government had known for a long time that drugs were being smuggled into the country from overseas, it was only recently that authorities uncovered that certain types of drugs were also being manufactured within the country. As such, he said the government decided to launch a national level programme to prevent this “disaster” from spreading further, the minister remarked. The national programme, which will be officially launched on October 30 at the Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium, will see the involvement of civil defence committees, police, tri forces and public officials among others, he said.

The programme will work across four different layers, the minister said. It will be overseen by a national council headed by the president and will also include a district operations committee, a divisional operations committee and the 14,000 local civil defence committees, the minister explained.

There was a direct link between organised crime and drug trafficking. They are like two sides of the same coin, Mr Wijepala claimed. While the underworld may not be with the politicians who are in power now, they are still present among some in other parties in varying degrees, though this did not mean all opposition MPs were connected to the underworld, the minister stressed.

Regarding criticism of his comments on the Weligama PS Chairman, Minister Wijepala stressed that the government will not trivialize any life. “We are a political movement that equally values the lives of all human beings, and as I said the other day, there is an extensive investigation by four separate police teams being conducted into the incident,” he insisted.

Every government that came to power since 1977 either looked the other way in the face of the drug menace or enriched themselves by establishing relationships with drug traffickers and the underworld, Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara said. “Drug trafficking and the underworld are intertwined. The present government is not connected to the underworld, which is why it is launching a national level programme to combat drug trafficking and organised crime,” the minister said.

Through this programme, the government aims to destroy the supply chain of the drug traffickers, Mr Nanayakkara noted. He further emphasised that those behind the assassination of the Weligama PS Chairman should be brought to justice, but urged the opposition not to protest when wrongdoers are arrested after investigations.

The ruling National People’s Power (NPP) government came to power promising “A thriving nation, a beautiful life,” Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa said, referring to the title of the NPP’s election manifesto. However, today, the entire country was being dragged into a culture of barbarism and murder, he charged. “I would like to ask the government whether this culture of barbarism and murder is still not a threat to the country’s national security.”

Mr Premadasa said the assassination shows that it was the law of the jungle that now prevails in the country. “We now have a situation where a people’s representative cannot serve the people who elected him through a public day,” he argued.

Drug trafficking takes place with the aid of a vast criminal network, Deputy Defence Minister Major General (Retd) Aruna Jayasekara told Parliament. “We have seen how politicians protected these networks in the past, but no government acted against that. This is why these organised criminal networks have spread so far and wide.”

Organised crimes are not simply limited to drug trafficking, said the deputy minister. It is embedded with human trafficking, mass scale corruption and weapons smuggling, he said. The organised criminal networks include some public servants, private companies, accountants and audit firms, banks, real estate agents and lawyers, he added.

Mr Jayasekara said the NPP government was bound by principle to eradicate the drug menace and organised crime and pledged it would be done. “We gave a pledge and you will see how it will be achieved,” he added.

Parliament will reconvene at 1.30 pm on November 7, when President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will present the National Budget for 2026.