Darshani Ratnawalli
In the USA, public prosecutors are elected.
To get elected public prosecutors must achieve convictions, the more convictions the better, the more sensational the convictions, the better.
If a public prosecutor only files cases, only talks about cases and fails to make any of it stick, i.e achieve convictions, he starts being seen as a failed prosecutor by the people.
He won’t be elected again.
In Sri Lanka too, between 2015 and 2019, President Anura Kumara (MP Anura Kumara then) and the President’s private secretary, Ananda Wijepala acted as quasi-public prosecutors, i.e. they maintained offices in Temple Trees, played with many corruption files, kept summoning officers of the Attorney General’s department to advise them on which prominent politician to prosecute and stirred up a nice bit of controversy (which eventually got investigated by a Presidential Commission of Inquiry on political victimization.)[1]
Wijepala was the JVP nominee and the secretary of a good governance anti-corruption Secretariat, while Anura was its member as well as the head of its rapid response unit.
After spending gallons of public money for their anti-corruption secretariat activities, Anura and Wijepala delivered zilch: no convictions, only files, which Anura Kumara took to transporting in the back of his double cab.
According to former Prez Ranil, all of 400 files were deliberated by the JVP, but Ananda Wijepala filed cases only against 40 of those files.[2]
Anura would carry those files, from talk show to talk show. He would play card games with those files, i.e. he would ask officers in Parliament to choose any card, sorry file, from his pile of files and he would then regale the unfortunate Parliament officer with the story of that file. He became the club (sorry the Parliament) bore telling stories about his unfulfilled files.
Because of Anura Kumara’s failure to achieve any notable convictions out of that pile of files, his dreams of reelection as a thief-catching agent of the State should have been quashed forever – if he had been a public prosecutor in the US that is.
He just got elected President in Sri Lanka on a thief-catching platform with the lowest percentage of votes ever obtained by a President of Sri Lanka since the inception of the office of executive president in the country.
On Anura’s campaign trail, he promised to reopen investigations into Sri Lanka’s bond scandal (already much investigated, internationally forensic audited and prosecuted up to the Court of Appeal) within 48 hours of his ascension. That deadline is now past.
END NOTES
[1] https://asianmirror.lk/news/item/33060-jvp-leaders-former-private-secretary-worked-as-secretary-of-controversia
[2] https://www.newswire.lk/2024/07/16/president-says-majority-of-akds-files-are-empty/
ALSO NOTE
Rajan Philips: .… https://island.lk/president-anura-kumara-dissanayakes-historic-win-and-his-promising-start/
Mohan Mendis: …… https://island.lk/wake-up-sri-lanka-presidential-elections-2024/
Jehan Perera: .….. https://island.lk/rallying-around-the-president/