Attack on Ranil: UNP wants swift action 

Failure of the Government to take action against perpetrators behind the attack on Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe in Balapitiya earlier this week would force the UNP to take their case to the UNHRC in Geneva and the member states of the Commonwealth, UNP MP Wijeyadasa Rajapakse said yesterday.

“If we are forced to take our problems with democracy to the international community, the Government will charge that we are traitors. But we have answers ready for those charges,” he said.

Rajapakse said it was President Mahinda Rajapaksa who had first taken the country’s lawlessness to Geneva in the early 1990s, when justice could not be obtained in Sri Lanka.

“At that time, the President said he had every right even to take the problems to the devil,” the Opposition MP recalled.

Charging that the Government had given licence to thugs to attack and assault democratically elected leaders and blaming a high level Government MP for the attack on Wickremesinghe’s convoy on Tuesday, Rajapakse said that the lawlessness in the country had descended to such levels that ruling party politicians were not committing most of the crimes in the country.

“These are the same MPs that are calling for a media ethics code and for the re-enactment of criminal defamation laws that will send journalists to jail – don’t these political thugs need a code of ethics first?” the UNP MP charged.

(DB)