National Freedom Front leader Wimal Weerawansa has accused President Anura Kumara Dissanayake of moving to protect fraudsters aligned with the government while pursuing those who helped end the war, telling the SLPP’s ‘Janasatana’ rally in Anuradhapura on Saturday that investigations are simply not being opened against people connected to the administration, Hiru News reported.
The speech was delivered at the rally held under the patronage of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, which Hiru places at the Anuradhapura Urban Council stadium.
A direct answer to the President, from the next district over
Weerawansa’s central charge turns on the term “black state” — the phrase the government uses for the criminal underworld. Hours earlier and roughly 60 kilometres away, Dissanayake had told an NPP farmers’ rally in Polonnaruwa that the underworld is one of two matters on which his government will hold no discussions and grant no pardons, and that armed criminal gangs would be eliminated completely.
Weerawansa’s retort was that the category is being applied selectively.
“Lal Kantha, who was in the backwoods of Anuradhapura, has quickly built three-storey houses, and they do not belong to the black state,” he said, according to Hiru’s translation. “‘Crypto’ Wasantha does not belong to the black state. No one who associates with him belongs to the black state.”
He also said that despite numerous allegations against former minister Rishad Bathiudeen, he has not been summoned for questioning.
The diaspora funding claim
Weerawansa turned to remarks made at the same rally by Jaffna District MP Ramanathan Archchuna about funds received from the Tamil diaspora, saying the government is now obliged to meet the conditions attached to that money.
The funds were used for the election campaign in the North, he said, leaving the government bound to satisfy diaspora demands rather than the promises it made to the public. Archchuna, who told the same rally that Namal Rajapaksa will win the 2029 presidential election, has previously claimed the diaspora funded Dissanayake “in billions” — a claim for which no evidence has been published by any outlet.
Context on the Lal Kantha allegation
Agriculture Minister K.D. Lal Kantha’s property holdings have been contested since April, when the Medical and Civil Rights Professional Association’s president filed a CIABOC complaint over his declaration of immovable assets worth more than Rs. 67 million. The minister has said publicly that he sold a property in Anuradhapura to fund a later land purchase.
Readers should note that the outlet carrying Weerawansa’s remarks is itself in dispute with the minister. Lal Kantha issued Asia Broadcasting Corporation, which operates Hiru TV, a Rs. 10 billion damages notice in April over its reporting on that same asset declaration, and threatened to seek the revocation of its broadcasting licence. Hiru reports the allegation as made from the platform; it does not put it to the minister.
Update (September 13): the Daily Mirror files the speech
The Daily Mirror filed its own account of the speech at midday on Sunday, a day after the rally. It confirms the substance of Hiru’s report and adds two things.
The venue is named differently. The Daily Mirror places the rally at the Anuradhapura Municipal Council grounds; Hiru called it the Anuradhapura Urban Council stadium. Neither outlet notes the discrepancy. Anuradhapura is a Municipal Council area, which favours the Daily Mirror’s version.
The “black state” charge is put the other way round. Where Hiru reported Weerawansa naming who is being spared, the Daily Mirror reports him naming who is being targeted: those who had pledged to protect the country and its people were being branded as belonging to a “black state” while individuals facing allegations were protected. Both accounts carry the same central claim — that investigations are opened selectively along political lines — and both carry the Rishad Bathiudeen example and the Archchuna diaspora-funding claim.
The Daily Mirror does not name Lal Kantha or “Crypto Wasantha,” referring only to “several political figures.” Its version is therefore the more cautious of the two, which is consistent with Hiru’s own dispute with Lal Kantha described above.
Not reported
Neither outlet identifies “Crypto Wasantha,” and neither carries any response from Lal Kantha, Bathiudeen, the President’s office or the NPP. Neither gives an attendance figure or a time for the speech, and neither says what evidence, if any, Weerawansa offered for the diaspora funding conditions he described.
NewsFirst’s rally dispatch does not mention Weerawansa at all. Ada Derana’s site was unreachable.
