Columns

It has certainly not been an auspicious start to the Sinhala and Hindu New Year for the JVP government.

Suddenly they have become like cats on a hot tin roof, forced to confront a plethora of financial issues which cast questions on their competence and, apart from throwing aspersions on their much-hailed integrity, shed doubts on their responsibility to exercise due diligence as the elected and answerable custodians of the public coffers.

Consider first:

Last week’s resignation of Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody over an alleged coal fraud caused the JVP’s hymen of chastity to be rent asunder in spite of 153 members of its parliamentary cadre solemnly vouching in the House only two weeks ago that it remained strongly intact, sans any sign of a single trespass.

Furthermore, the allegation also shattered their scrupulously groomed ‘reformed’ image as presently being a party – though born out of terrorism’s dastardliness – of reborn men and women, steeped in integrity and grounded in honesty, against whom not a single stone of corruption had been cast nor even a rumour of potential corruptibility had ever been whispered.

With such self-proclaimed credentials repeated over and over again to become a mantra that kept the nation rapt in a mystic trance, they had continuously held themselves up as immaculate as the Vestal Virgins had been to tend the sacred hearth fire of ancient Rome. On this singular claim alone – though untested – to possess financial integrity, they gained the people’s confidence to occupy the sovereign seat of governance.

SURIYAPPERUMA: Missing millions were under his watch

But will the same January ill wind that blew the lid off the coal scam now blow the JVP off their high moral ground?

The existence of a massive coal scam was first revealed by SLPP MP D.V. Chanaka in Parliament over three months ago.

In the second week of January this year, he told a startled House:

n The government has ordered a series of inferior coal shipments which would require Norochcholai Coal Power Plant to burn 13 more metric tonnes of coal per hour.

n Furthermore, suspicion surrounded the whole tender procedure. The year’s coal stock is generally ordered in April. Last year, however, the annual coal tender was delayed from April to September 2025, and a new six-month contract was awarded to a company through a “highly unusual” tender process.

n Chanaka also claimed in Parliament that due to the need to use extra coal and potential reliance on diesel power, the scam was projected to cause a total loss of up to Rs. 100 billion to the state.

The musical score that Chanaka played to the House on January 9th this year has refused to fall silent and, despite government attempts to play it down, continues to command the No. 1 spot in the popular charts of alleged frauds and stands on the threshold of gaining entry to the Guinness Book of Records as the largest fraud ever committed in Lanka, if proved in court.

The constant refrain parroted by the JVP leadership – that none of their members have even an allegation of petty theft or minor fraud made against them – was condemned to lie entombed in a silent crypt when Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody was not merely charged with a vague and unsustainable allegation but indicted in court on March 27th this year for allegedly causing a loss of over Rs 8 million to the state while he was the Procurement Manager of Lanka Fertiliser Company in 2016.

Throughout January, February and March, a gallant battalion of JVP knights had bravely defended the fort of Camelot from a barrage of poisoned missiles shot by enemy bows to pierce the façade of its avowed chastity, while a lower order of kinsmen had been tasked to cleanse the moat of toxic effluence dumped by jealous rival forces, envious of the water’s purity.

But increasing traces of soot, smearing their white tunics, had been harder to get rid of than previously thought. The more they were washed, the more they appeared. It called for a spot of dry cleaning at the biggest laundromat in town.

JAYAKODI: Resigns but hopes to return

As the SUNDAY PUNCH commented on April 10, ‘The President goes to Parliament and admits for the first time that the imported stock of coal – which had been at the centre of a controversial coal fraud – has proved to be of an inferior stock, which has affected power generation in Norochcholai.

On April 7, he tells Parliament that though the imported coal stock had been of inferior quality, ‘there has been no issue about the procurement process that awarded the coal supply contract.’

His visit to Parliament to admit that the imported coal was, indeed, of a poorer quality – despite an ‘impeccable’ procurement process – came exactly 11 days after Energy Minister Kumar Jayakody was indicted in court by the Bribery Commission under section 70 of the Bribery Act for corruption.

However – as bad luck would have it – not even 48 hours had been allowed to pass when the Auditor General’s Report to Parliament on the coal fraud revealed a major hiccup in the procurement process as well.

On Thursday, Parliament was told by the Auditor General’s report that not only had the contract with Trident Chemphar been signed without the Attorney General’s approval but – worse still – Trident Chemphar had not even been registered at the time it entered into an agreement with the Sri Lankan government.

The following day, the SJB’s no-confidence motion brought against Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody suffered a major defeat in the House. In the government ranks, rejoicement filled the air, with 153 out of a total of 159 JVP MPs expressing their utmost confidence in Minister Jayakody. But their celebrations did not last for more than a week. In a shock announcement, the public was informed that Kumara Jayakody had tendered his resignation from his cabinet portfolio as energy minister.

The 153 JVP MPs who gloated with glee while watching the humiliating defeat suffered by those in the SJB a week ago were now forced to stand rooted in embarrassment and shame, undone by their lack of judgement and discernment.

This was the second time the SJB had reserved the last laugh and the delayed triumph unto themselves within the last three years. The first occasion was when they had brought a motion of no confidence against Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella in 2023 to the jeers of ruling SLPP MPs who, without much bother, defeated it with ease in September. Within six weeks, Rambukwella was sacked.

With Kumara Jayaody, the SJB torpedo found its designated target faster. Within a week Jayakody was sunk. He had not been alone either when the SJB torpedo had struck. The Energy Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Udayanga Hemapala, had been with him, and he, too, had gone down with the ship.

The President’s Media Division’s statement regarding the minister’s resignation also said, ‘The minister also expressed the view that his continued presence in office during the course of the investigation could be perceived as an impediment to that process. On this basis, he stated that he will resign from his role as the minister from April 17.’

Evidently Jayakody has not lost hope of being salvaged from the sea and returning home to a hero’s welcome at Pelawatte. But who can place faith in fate’s mysterious ways to chart its own course to dispose of the best-laid plans of mice and men?

Consider secondly.

Hardly had the four-month-long ‘Soot smears on your collar showed the tail in you’ saga ended its seasonal run on a cliffhanger when, hard on its heels, comes another mega-buster to keep you transfixed to your TV screens playing the guessing game of ‘whodunit’.

It involves the mysterious disappearance of 2.5 million dollars – nearly 800 million rupees – from the Treasury. The disappearance had been detected in January, but the public was informed only this week.

The nation only got wind that 2.5 million US dollars had mysteriously vanished from the Treasury after it was reported that a letter to that effect had been sent by Free Lawyers Organisation’s Maithri Gunaratne PC to the Speaker urging him to get Parliament to draw up a mechanism to probe the scandalous affair.

On Tuesday, Cabinet spokesman Minister Nalinda Jayatissa said that he does not have any detailed information on the matter apart from the letter to the Speaker sent by Maithri Gunaratne PC.

The Finance Ministry issued a statement on Tuesday evening, stating that ‘based on identified information relating to a foreign currency payment in January 2026’, a complaint had ‘already been lodged with the Criminal Investigation Department and the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Central Bank’. It later transpired that the complaint had only been lodged in March.

SJB MP Harsha de Silva said in a post on X, ‘Disappeared! This is not just negligence. This is a failure we warned about. When debt operations were moved from the Central Bank to the Treasury’s PDMO, the COPF repeatedly urged the Treasury to hire competent, experienced staff. Managing a sovereign nation’s debt in global financial markets is not a clerical task. Those warnings were ignored.’

Harshana Suri’yapperuma, who resigned as JVP National List MP to be appointed as Secretary of the Finance Ministry and the Treasury by Finance Minister Anura Kumara Dissanayake in June last year, addressed the media on Thursday and declared, ‘The government remains engaged with creditors while limiting disclosures so as not to jeopardise investigations by forcing the perpetrators to change their modus operandi and go underground.’

So, mum’s the word, lest the faceless hackers – on whom the government lays the blame for the cybercrime – get to know that their hacking has been uncovered in January and that a formal complaint has already been lodged at the relevant institutions and that, even after three months, financial officials remain none the wiser.

But take heart. Suriyapperuma touchingly assures us all that ‘We have consulted our technical advisers on the debt restructuring, who have also advised us that our debt restructuring or ability to service debt is not at risk.’ Thank God for that.

And, of course, can we not draw comfort from the presidential promise that every rupee belonging to the people has been accounted for and is safely lodged in the Treasury vaults, as safe as the gold in Fort Knox in the United States is America?

During a progress review meeting of the Ministry of Power and Energy on October 15, 2024, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake stated: Every rupee that belongs to the people will be sacredly held as Sangika property, and no one has any right to subject that property to fraud or corruption.

What better sterling guarantee can there be than that coming, as it did, straight from the horse’s mouth?

Meanwhile, the mystery of the missing 2.5 million US dollars will be added to the growing list of unsolved mysteries, which include the mystery of the missing 323 containers that vanished from Colombo Port early last year.

But the truth has the strange habit – as Poirot observed in one of Agatha Christie’s ‘whodunit’ novels – of revealing itself. Let us hope so, indeed, it will be so, even in this godforsaken island where even a decent foreign dog cannot walk the streets without being molested. If you doubt, just ask Aloka.

Esmond Satharasinghe bids farewell Esmond Satharasinghe, who once strode the corporate stage like a colossus in the sixties, passed away peacefully on Thursday at the age of a hundred years. There was providence, indeed – as he oft used to say – in his rise to the top of his chosen field of corporate life, where he bagged a notable haul of ‘firsts’. He became the first Ceylonese to hold the position of chairman and managing director of Brooke Bond (Ceylon) Limited, a subsidiary of the giant British conglomerate that dominated the tea market. In a recent YouTube interview, he was asked how he achieved that particular feat. His simple answer was: ‘They provided the canvas, and I became the painter.’ SATHARASINGHE: Corporate titan After graduating he had the option of following law, as his family had a ‘surfeit of proctors’, or diving headlong into the dizzy world of figures. He chose chartered accountancy. It gave him the professional wherewithal to meet the challenges faced in corporate activities. ‘There was nothing arithmetic about it; it was purely providential,’ he says with all humbleness. It also enabled him to score another first in his illustrious career. He became the first accountant in Ceylon to be appointed as board director of the Bank of Ceylon. He was a member of the First Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka and the first Chairman of its Taxation Committee. He held the role of financial advisor to the Ministry of Plantation Industries and served on the boards of major financial institutions, including the Insurance Corporation of Sri Lanka. With so many ‘firsts’ to his name, it is also ironically sad to note, Esmond Satharasinghe would, most probably, have been the last of a bygone era left standing to pass the torch to a new breed of accountants to whom his words of advice were, ‘You are no longer mere recorders of accounts but advisors to the board on how to make any venture a more profitable enterprise.’ He leaves behind his wife Therese Rukmani nee Abeywardene, his daughter Shyamini, his son Sathyajith, his daughter-in-law Vasanthi and his granddaughter Semini.