Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa has been re-elected.
Let’s take this moment to remember Mahinda’s good friend, newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was assassinated last year, and who blamed the assassination on Mahinda in a posthumous letter.
In the wake of my death I know you will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry. But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too. For truth be told, we both know who will be behind my death, but dare not call his name. Not just my life, but yours too, depends on it.
Sadly, for all the dreams you had for our country in your younger days, in just three years you have reduced it to rubble. In the name of patriotism you have trampled on human rights, nurtured unbridled corruption and squandered public money like no other President before you. Indeed, your conduct has been like a small child suddenly let loose in a toyshop. That analogy is perhaps inapt because no child could have caused so much blood to be spilled on this land as you have, or trampled on the rights of its citizens as you do. Although you are now so drunk with power that you cannot see it, you will come to regret your sons having so rich an inheritance of blood. It can only bring tragedy. As for me, it is with a clear conscience that I go to meet my Maker. I wish, when your time finally comes, you could do the same. I wish.
Wickrematunge’s prediction from the grave has come true as no one has been arrested or charged with his murder. A journalist with the Canberra Times reported that the person referenced at “dare not call his name” is Mahinda’s brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the minister of defense.
See Gotabaya squirm – eyes bugging, hands flailing, voice pitch rising, changing the subject, casting suspicion on all the former presidents – when asked about Wickrematunge’s death in a BBC interview last February. He derides Wickrematunge as a “tabloid writer” and said it was “just another murder.”
He ends the interview by calling all dissent and criticism of the government ‘treason.’ Nice guy.
