President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Tuesday that no one in Sri Lanka stands above the law, including the President, and that public officials must not be intimidated into shielding wrongdoing.
The remarks, delivered as the Opposition wrote to Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena alleging executive pressure on the judiciary, framed the government’s accountability drive as a structural reset rather than a campaign of persecution.
“Everyone must be subject to the law and must fear the law, regardless of position,” the President said. “This principle applies equally to the President and to grassroots-level public officers.”
Dissanayake said he was aware of efforts to instil fear within the public service and to portray routine legal procedure as oppression. He pointed to what he called a damaging culture in which individuals with political backing, wealth or proximity to power had been able to evade the law.
“If my name has been mentioned in an investigation, then shouldn’t a statement be recorded from me? It has to be recorded,” he said, defending the recording of witness statements as standard procedure that should apply to him as it does to any citizen.
He warned that a “false societal narrative” was being constructed to depict lawful procedures as persecution. He added that the law would not be enforced with vengeance, hatred or anger, and that fair enforcement would not hinder public officials acting within their authority.
The President referred to former Heads of State whose actions had been found by the Supreme Court to have breached the Constitution, asking what would remain of a country whose Presidents themselves crossed constitutional limits.
The statement came on the same day former President Mahinda Rajapaksa appeared before the Bribery Commission in the SriLankan Airlines Airbus probe and a cross-party Opposition letter to the Chief Justice alleged a “grave onslaught” on judicial independence.
