FactCheck.lk responds to Ranil on EPF losses due to debt restructuring

We have taken the response of the former president seriously. We believe those we factcheck deserve the benefit of the doubt and that their responses should be given the highest consideration,” FactCheck.k said.

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The FactCheck.lk said that the former president contested its analysis on three grounds (1) Alleges that the word “only’used in analysing Wickremesinghe’s claim results in a misrepresentation After reviewing this claim carefully, we think that if there is any misrepresentation of his claim, it is in his response to the fact-check, and not in the fact-check itself. There are at least three reasons (linguistic, attributional and logical) for reading his statement as claiming that “the EPF was subject to only a maturity extension”. We set out these three below.

(i) The statement, which we quoted verbatim was ‘...] In the case of EPF, what we dealt was the maturity extensions so not a single person has lost a cent in that.” The phrase “what we dealt” is, linguistically, a complete description of the action taken to restructure the EPF. The president did not say “one of the things we dealt” or “among the things we dealt”; he only said “what we dealt.”

(ii) It is an exclusive attribution. He mentions only the “maturity extension”. Nowhere in the interview does he leave any room for the listeners to hear him attributing anything other than a maturity extension to the restructure of the EPF.