By P.K. Balachandran, IANS
Colombo : The year is ending on a sombre note for former Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumratunga. All office equipment in her fortified house has been carted away by government workers following a Supreme Court ruling that former presidents were not entitled to residence and office at government expense.
The court’s ruling had come way back in May, but the government issued an eviction notice only on Sep 30, significantly, after Kumaratunga had failed to invite President Mahinda Rajapaksa or his family for the grand reception she had held to celebrate the marriage of her daughter Yashodhara, The Sunday Times reported.
Hoards of government workers took away Kumaratunga’s office equipment Thursday. At the time of the closure of her office, the ex-president had 25 government staff working for her.
Kumaratunga has had a bad run in the matter of retaining her office. In 2005, the Supreme Court upset her bid to get one more year as president. Earlier, her ambitious plan to get a new presidential palace cum office built over a large area at Madiwela in the outskirts of Colombo was thwarted by a public outcry.
The year-end has also been a season of expulsions of high profile foreigners from Sri Lanka.
Following the cancellation of the work permit given to Peter Hill, the British CEO of national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines, earlier this month, the government expelled Norbert Ropers, director of the controversial Swiss-German funded Berghof Foundation for Conflict Studies.
Hill had declined to accommodate a last minute request from president Rajapaksa’s office for 35 seats for the president and his entourage in a fully booked London-Colombo flight recently. The president and his jumbo retinue were returning from a private visit to Britain.
But the Dubai-based Emirates, which runs Sri Lankan Airlines, did not take Hill’s ouster lying down. It said that Hill would continue to be CEO and operate from Dubai. Industry sources say that the Emirates-Sri Lankan Airlines tie up is on its last legs.
Ropers was expelled for not responding to a call by a parliamentary select committee on NGOs to appear before it to answer allegations that NGOs were hand in glove with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Beghof Foundation’s case for not appearing was that it was not an NGO and that it existed in Sri Lanka on the basis of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the government of Sri Lanka.
Recently, there were shrill calls from Sri Lankan nationalists for the expulsion of British High Commissioner Dominic Chilcott for having said in a public lecture that there was nothing objectionable in the Tamil Tigers asking for a separate state of Tamil Eelam and that what was unacceptable was their violent methods.