Lanka Citizen

Then, with regard to the ubiquitous spectre of corruption too, President Kumaratunga has many questions to answer, not least her direct intervention in the offer of state land near the Parliament complex to so-called “foreign investors” under the guise of inviting overseas investment to the country to build a golf course. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, an arms dealer who made his money during the period President Kumaratunga ‘steadfastly stood for negotiations’ purchased the property from those “foreign investors” — and at least there is a golf course there now! Those “foreign investors” introduced by Kumaratunga laughed all the way to the bank with the loot obtained for doing nothing other than being recommended by the Head of State to her rubber-stamp cabinet.

It does seem as if someone really has a fascination for golf courses, because the Bank of Ceylon when it was directly under President Kumaratunga approved a soft-loan for a Sri Lankan living close to Shenley in the outskirts of London to build a mini-golf course there. And it is perhaps just a co-incidence that President Kumaratunga would frequent this Sri Lankan’s Shenley home during her many visits private, official, and semi-official to the United Kingdom!

Kumaratunga’s claims of ensuring media freedom must be viewed in the context of the many ‘media events’ that marred her rule. The assault on journalists who covered a UNP demonstration outside Town Hall on the 15th of July, 1995, indictments on several editors of national newspapers on criminal defamation charges, giving special dispensation to a judge who heard such a case, the murder of Rohana Kumara, the editor of the tabloid ‘Satana’, and the assault on another editor critical of her and his journalist wife, are but a few of these events.

Courtesy Sunday Times