How Petty Power Struggle Led to Sri Lanka’s Deadly Fall

The fight for power in Sri Lanka could have been the cause of the deadly Sri Lanka attack that claimed the lives of more than 310 people including dozens of foreign nationals.

Fresh details indicate that terrorists may have taken advantage of the power struggles in Sri Lanka to wreck havoc on innocent citizens praying in churches and foreigners in hotels.

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This is after reports indicated that Both the United States of America and India has warned about impending attacks on the island country.

But due to the divisions in the country pitting President Maithripala Sirisena and the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe,  the warnings went largely unheeded.

Last year, President Sirisena unceremoniously kicked out his Prime Minister out of office, and a drawn constitutional crisis would later ensue.

Sometime in December last year, the Supreme Court reinstated Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, though the President had stripped him of the Powers to coordinate security meetings.

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Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena

The warnings came as early as April 4, and on April 9, the Country’s Minister of Defence forwarded the details of the impending attack by suicide bombers on Christian churches and foreign hotels, including the list of suspected masterminds, to the Inspector General of Police.

On April, 11, the memo was forwarded by the Deputy Inspector general of Police to several government departments, little action was taken.

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Even 10 minutes before the fateful Easter Sunday, Intelligence reports from India and USA indicated a deadly attack, but the government said the reports were “unclear.”

Finance Minister Harsha de Silva, in an interview with CNN said the “Prime Minister was kept in the dark about the warnings.”

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Right: Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe

Sri Lanka’s Minister for Health, Senaratne, also said the Prime Minister had been removed from the National Security council, and was not receiving critical Intelligence briefs from the Police.

Moments after the blasts, the Prime Minister convened a meeting, but it was largely snubbed by the members of the security council.

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“I think this is the only country in the world where the security council does not like to come when summoned by the Prime Minister of the country,” Senaratne said.

Senaratne, believes the attacks could have been coordinated and facilitated by ISIS, as NTJ was incapable of carrying out such large-scale attacks.

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 “There must be a wider international network behind it,” he noted.

Security experts maintain that the NTJ was technically incapable of conducting such an attack as they have never done any sort of large-scale attack before.

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The closest they have gone is dismantling the Buddhist statues and conducting protests.

The loss that led to the highest death toll ever recorded in the last 10 years of the island nation’s history could have been avoided.

The country now says the carnage happened not due to lack of intelligence, but the inaction that followed the receiving of intelligence.

A series of curfews were to be later imposed in Colombo allowing the government to conduct arrests without court orders.

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By Tuesday morning, at least 40 people had been arrested in connection with the terror that claimed the lives of more than 300 civilians.

Meanwhile, 87 bomb detonators were discovered in a bus station in Colombo, while several bombs were defused at the country’s largest airport on Sunday.

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