Verite Research, deploying this title “Gammanpila’s book launch on Easter Attacks: A story that did not sell”
This week’s analysis is set out under two headings.
1. What was the key event that captured public attention?
Mar. 31: Former MP Udaya Gammanpila launched his book, “Searching for the Mastermind of the Easter Sunday Attacks,” in which he identifies Zahran Hashim—founder of the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ)—as the primary architect and coordinator of the 2019 bombings. The launch was attended by former Presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and Maithripala Sirisena, along with several opposition politicians, including Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa.
Despite the Easter Sunday attacks remaining a high-profile issue of keen public interest, the book’s launch drew only minimal media attention, most of which was critical or sarcastic. In this issue of MPA, we examine why the event failed to gain traction in Sinhala media discourse.
2. Why did Gammanpila’s book fail to gain traction despite sustained public interest in the Easter Sunday attacks investigation?
The launch appears to have failed to gain traction because both Gammanpila, as an author, and his thesis appear to have lacked credibility. Its limited uptake seems to have been shaped by two perceptions: the public perception of the perpetrators of the Easter Sunday attacks and that of Gammanpila himself.
i. Public perception of the perpetrators of the Easter Sunday attacks
First, there appears to be a gap between Gammanpila’s thesis—which isolates Zahran Hashim as the sole “mastermind”—and a wider public belief in more complex “deep state” involvement.
In the immediate aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks in 2019, the Sri Lankan government blamed the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a local Islamist extremist group, and its leader, Zahran Hashim, for the attacks.[2] Hashim himself took part in the attacks as a suicide bomber and died at the Shangri-La hotel.
In this context, Gammanpila’s “revelation” was less a bombshell and more a damp squib; Gammanpila spent weeks building a stage only to perform a script the public had already been saturated with since 2019. Expectations were heightened by the narrative he had built in the run-up to the book’s launch through media briefings, of a significant disclosure. But what was revealed in the book, by simply restating existing claims, failed to comprehensively deliver on the expectations created.[3] As a result, the “revelation” was met with ridicule, particularly in social media discourse.
Verité Research’s Syndicated Surveys, administered in October 2023, showed that, at that time, more than half of Sri Lankans (53 percent) believe local political forces were involved in the Easter Sunday attacks (see Figure 1). Only 8 percent of Sri Lankans believe that the attacks were carried out by just Sri Lankan extremists working with dangerous foreign forces.
Figure 1: Findings from the Syndicated Surveys question on the Easter Sunday attacks
Second, the lack of traction stems from the author’s political profile. Gammanpila remains tied to a presently delegitimised set of past political actors. This inevitably colours his public image and the credibility of his work.
Gammanpila is widely perceived as a key architect of the nationalist rhetoric that defined the pre-2022 period. Because he is inextricably linked to the administration dismantled by the aragalaya (mass uprisings that took place in 2022) and subsequent elections, his “research” is met with deep-seated scepticism rather than being received as an objective inquiry.
As such, Gammanpila is often viewed as a “man of the past” whose traditional appeals no longer resonate with a public seeking a clean break from the old guard. This was reinforced by the irony of the guests at the book launch. The image of three former presidents—each of whom oversaw different stages of the intelligence and judicial failures surrounding the attacks—sitting in the front row to hear a “revelation” about the mastermind was not lost on the public. Rather than a search for truth, the event was perceived as a theatrical exercise in collective self-exoneration (please refer to the memes published in this issue of MPA.)
In this context, the book was interpreted as attempting to shield the “deep state” that many believe enabled or facilitated political gain for the previous administration. Consequently, the narrative advanced in the book appears to have clashed with a public now more inclined to believe in systemic political complicity than in the simplified account offered by a member perceived as part of the old guard.
