Not sure the UNP bond fraud ‘pales’ by comparison, as this was a several BILLION dollar blunder because of the size of the bond issuance, length to maturity, and difference between paying 9.5% on these bonds versus 12%. Think about all the economic development you could have funded with the billions lost?

Ceypetco is now complaining about cost-of-living fraud, in that the UNP is artificially lowering petrol prices below their cost for election purposes. They claim they will have to go out of business unless the government subsidizes these losses.

Again, this is not “good governance”, it is short-term election gimmicks and deception by Ranil and the UNP to try to gain power.

UPFA will get 130 seats. Bank Bond scam has finished UNP. those involved in this horrendous crime will have a rebirth as cockroaches! they will not get punished in this life. they will FLY-BY-NIGHT on 16th August.

Leaving all political agenda’s aside, if you have a look at the blunder’s caused by the government run under MR, the Central Bank bond issue pales in comparison. But let me start off by saying yes, I agree the CB governor should have been fired. The UNP should have come out and taken the blame for the debacle and started investigating Perpetual Treasuries and the insiders in the banks (BOC, etc) that handled the bond issue.

However, lets have a look at some of the failures of the previous government shall we? A 100 billion rupee loss at Sri Lankan airlines as at February, 2015[1]. And lets keep in mind that this was a perfectly well functioning company when it was run in partnership with Emirates and Peter Hill was the CEO. And how did they counter this in the 10 years of their governance?

Then lets look at the CEB and Ceypetco. Until Champika Ranawaka was appointed as the Minister of Energy (i.e. in charge of the CEB) it was complete chaos (at least from an outsider’s point of view). They did end up increasing prices because of the terrible financial situation, but managed to bring things under control and even ended up reducing prices somewhere in 2013. And then what did they do? Removed the man who was clearly doing a good job and appointed Pavithra Vanniarachchi.

And Ceypetco came under heavy burden because of both these mammoth companies couldn’t meet their fiscal obligations.

All this is without taking into account all the thuggery, political victimisation of the judicial system, nepotism and to top it all off, the 18th Amendment.

Of course the previous government built the highways, ports and rehabilitated some of the rural road network. But they used the worst tactics to do all these things. The commissions, bribery and the lack of due process when undertaking these projects was way too much. The ends do not always justify the means.

[1]https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/sri-lankan-airlines-parliament-reveals-ul-loss-is-over-rs-100-billion/

My dear, you are not understanding the election dynamics of Sri Lanka. MR had gone with full throttle to get that 58 million votes. Do you really believe that 58 million is still there? Just look at the crossovers specially at grassroot level, which usually reflects what is the stronger side. Truth is that like every coalition, the time of UPFA is up. They will have to create another one on 2020 to get the power back!!!

The basic problem with Harim’s analysis is he tries to simplify the election dynamics to one of ethnic inclusion (UNP) versus “mono ethno religious, rural Sinhala Buddhist voters” (UPFA) without telling us that there were at least 2 million voters in January that did NOT vote along ethnic lines and fell for the short-term election gimmick of Ranil concerning “good governance”. These good governance voters are not UNP party loyalists and probably voted for Rajapaksa and the UPFA in 2010 to give him his two-thirds majority.

The basic question in the upcoming August election is who are these good governance voters going to vote for this time around, knowing that Ranil and the UNP took them for a ride on the good governance issue, and tried to cover up the largest bond fraud in Sri Lankan history with a so-called ‘independent’ committee of UNP party loyalists who claimed the Central Bank Governor, Arjuna Mahendran, had “no direct involvement in the issuance of the bonds to his nephew’s securities firm.” Page 8 of the interim COPE report that the Ranil and the UNP are desperately trying to prevent from being disclosed to the public contains testimony from at least two different superintendents in the bond trading room of the Central Bank that said that Mahendran came into the bond trading room twice during the bond issuance in question, demanded to see the bidding list, and then directed them over their objections to accept bids to the ‘exact’ amount of his nephew’s bid. They also said during their entire careers with the Central Bank, a Central Bank Governor has never before come into their trading room and intervene in a specific issuance of particular bonds.

This ain’t “good governance” folks, so it is no surprise that the UNP is trying to cover up the bond scam like the worst secret in the world, by first getting a phony ‘independent’ committee to clear Mahendran with a deliberate lie concerning his direct involvement, then getting Maithripala to dissolve parliament right before the COPE report on the bond fraud was to be released, and now this latest stunt of getting a UNP loyalist judge to issue an injunction against the distribution of the COPE report by certain members of Parliament. This entire attempted cover-up is with the vain hope that the UNP can fool the good governance voters who voted for them in January once again to have them support their corrupt UNP-led regime.

Even if Mahinda gets only half of these 2 million good governance voters, if he holds onto his base of 5.8 million voters from January, he is looking at a 130 seat majority in Parliament in August with 6.8 million UPFA votes and a new job as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.

If you want to read about the UNP’s so-called good governance in the COPE report (see page 8), you can find it by doing a Google search for: “draft interim report on treasury bond issue leaked”