Denial at any cost?

President Maithripala Sirisena has predictably refused to accept the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) report, which has named him and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as among the key people whose failure to carry out their responsibilities led to the Easter Sunday attacks. 

His refusal to give the PSC report Cabinet approval this week will hardly come as a surprise, given that President Sirisena was vehemently opposed to the PSC from the very beginning, even going so far as to describe it as a “drama that was produced by Temple Trees,” and reluctantly presented his views to its members. Instead, Sirisena has steadfastly backed the Presidential Commission appointed by him in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, despite the fact that it was an ad hoc committee that did not have the legal status of the PSC, and conducted a far shorter investigation on fewer people than the PSC. 

The PSC, by contrast, sat for about five months and spoke to far more officials, both political and security focused, and incorporated the Malalgoda report to its final document. In its report, the PSC notes that the “ad hoc Committee was not desirable and should not be treated as a valid precedence. The PSC nevertheless decided to receive evidence from the members of this Committee, since they had the benefit of evidence from key personalities taken immediately after the attacks.” The PSC report then goes onto note that the observations of the Malalgoda report also overlaps their own findings, and therefore were incorporated into the final PSC report. 

Despite the legal shortcomings of the Malalgoda report, the President forwarded it to the Attorney General, who used it to take legal action against former Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando and Inspector General of Police (IGP) Pujith Jayasundara. However, the responsibilities of other key officials such as State Intelligence Service (SIS) head Nilantha Jayawardene, which the PSC has said bears a “prime responsibility” for security lapses, was not featured in the Malalgoda report. It is also unclear how much responsibility the Malalgoda report allocates to the political leadership, including the President and Prime Minister, as well as other key Ministers, on their role in ensuring coordination between the different intelligence agencies and ensuring that timely action was taken to mitigate the attacks. 

In a tragedy such as the Easter Sunday attacks, the process for accountability is often a long and painful one, especially in a deeply politicised country such as Sri Lanka. But the first step should ideally be some level of acceptance of responsibility by the top members of Government. Despite all evidence to the contrary, President Sirisena has maintained a stoic stance of blanket denial that has been difficult to defend, and remains unaccepted by the public, despite numerous attempts by his loyalists to whitewash his role. His refusal to allow Cabinet approval for the PSC report is just one step in continuing the indefensible. 

The PSC report does not require Cabinet approval. It is still likely to be presented before Parliament for debate, and the House can forward it to the Attorney General for consideration and subsequent legal action. But President Sirisena continuing to sidestep responsibility undermines the collective effort taken to push forward some level of accountability through the PSC process. As Head of State, he has the prime responsibility to ensure that accountability is upheld and security gaps are closed. He has a central part to play in hundreds of families finding closure, and Sri Lanka being able to move forward from arguably one the worst heartbreaks in its history.