Indictment of President Emeritus

The issue at hand should be decided according to the reasonable man standard

- By Nihal Abeyasingha

IN the context of the indictment of Ranil Wickremesinghe, various persons gave various reasons why this should not have been done. Several recalled his service to the country in various forms, his age and health condition. Others spoke of an erosion of democracy. (On the opposite side). It could have been said that he had been involved in some way in the bond scam; that he was in some way even remotely connected with Batalanda, etc... Let the negatives be cast aside for a moment.

The charge is very simply that he had engaged in a private trip and had charged the Government 166 million for that jaunt. On a popular TV show the host pointed out that the current president had visited his mother and suppose he had also gone to his home town and visited friends and stayed overnight and used public funds for all this, would he also be guilty of an offence?