Easter Bombs reshaped Sri Lanka’s politics, turning tragedy into a battle over power, fear, blame and narrative control.
Easter Bombs became one of the darkest turning points in Sri Lanka’s modern political history, not only because of the lives lost, but because of how the tragedy was later used in the struggle for political dominance and narrative control.
When the Easter bomb exploded, the Rajapaksas were still trapped in the political fallout of the October conspiracy and appeared lost.
A man standing near a newspaper stand reportedly said while looking at the day’s papers:
“So you’re saying the Rajapaksas were the ones who had the bomb?”
The mudali asked, visibly stunned.
“I don’t know that. But it was the Rajapaksas who used the Easter bomb to blow up Ranil’s government,” the man replied, before walking out of the shop without even buying the newspaper.
There is truth in that story.
When then President Maithripala Sirisena removed Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister in 2018 and appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa instead, Mahinda faced deep embarrassment after failing to show 113 MPs in Parliament.
Then, when the Supreme Court ordered Mahinda to immediately resign from the post of Prime Minister, he was left politically helpless.
Before that, Mahinda and the Pohottuwa had taken the premiership from Maithripala Sirisena after the 2018 local government election momentum. But by accepting the premiership from Sirisena, Mahinda also lost it.
Then came the Easter attack, almost like a political lottery for the Rajapaksas and the Pohottuwa.
Immediately after the bombs exploded, Gotabaya Rajapaksa told foreign media that he would contest the presidential election.
From that point onward, Gotabaya, Mahinda, Basil, the Rajapaksa family, the Pohottuwa, Wimal Weerawansa, Udaya Gammanpila, Dinesh Gunawardena, and other alliance leaders moved into action.
The strategy Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga used in 2004 to bring down Ranil’s government was to accuse him of appeasing the LTTE.
The strategy used by the Rajapaksas in 2019 to weaken Ranil’s government was to accuse him of appeasing Muslim terrorists.
In 2004, Chandrika used Prabhakaran to claim that Ranil was helping the Tigers.
In 2019, the Rajapaksas could not find a figure like Prabhakaran within the Muslim community to build the same type of accusation.
So they replaced Prabhakaran with Rishad Bathiudeen, one of the most powerful ministers in Ranil’s government.
The Rajapaksas branded him a terrorist.
They accused Ranil and the UNP of turning a blind eye to the bombings by protecting Muslim leaders who, they claimed, were supporting Muslim terrorists, including Rishad.
The day after the bombings, Mahinda went to meet Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith and succeeded in getting the Cardinal to confirm that the attacks were the government’s fault.
At that time, Ranil appeared to be in a different world.
When UNP MPs went to meet him, Ranil reportedly told them a strange story.
“Look how Mahinda and Maithri are spinning this for Maithri…”
Ranil said.
Ranil seemed to believe that because Mahinda and Maithri were politically hostile, and because Maithri was the Defence Minister, Mahinda would use the bombings to finish Maithri politically.
Mahinda gave Ranil that rope and made him believe that Maithri, as Defence Minister, should take responsibility for the Easter attack.
Whether Ranil and the UNP truly believed this is unclear.
UNP MPs also began saying that Maithri had not allowed their leader and Prime Minister Ranil to attend Security Council meetings, and that Maithri must accept responsibility for the bombing.
But by then, the Rajapaksas had already reached an understanding to contest the presidential election together with Maithri.
The purpose was to pocket the 1.4 million votes Maithri had won through the 2018 local government election wave.
Therefore, the Rajapaksas calculated that the Easter attack had to be blamed on Ranil and the UNP, and that the UNP had to be destroyed.
The Rajapaksas set the country on fire by lighting the Easter bomb politically.
In the eyes of many people, Ranil and the UNP became traitors who had protected terrorists destroying the country.
The same old charge was recycled: Ranil and the UNP had once allegedly fed Prabhakaran and blocked Mahinda from ending the war.
Now, the Rajapaksas, Udaya, Wimal, and Dinesh claimed Ranil and the UNP were feeding Muslim terrorists and turning Sri Lanka into a haven for them.
Citing international media reports that radical Sri Lankan Muslims had received training in Syria, the Rajapaksas accused Ranil and the UNP of allowing Sri Lanka to become a country producing human bombs for international Muslim terrorist targets.
Ranil and the UNP became so helpless before the anti-Muslim and anti-Ranil tsunami created by the Rajapaksas that all Muslim ministers in the government were told to resign.
Chandrika and Mahinda had earlier destroyed Ranil and the UNP by branding them as LTTE supporters.
After the war ended, people gradually forgot the LTTE.
That is why Ranil and the UNP were able to win in 2015.
Just as Ranil and the UNP were trying to recover from the old LTTE label, the Rajapaksas branded them as ISIS supporters.
That became the new slogan.
The Rajapaksas, Wimal, and Udaya created fear and panic in the country by claiming that Dr. Shafi, who was linked to the UNP government, had performed sterilization surgeries on Sinhala Buddhist women.
The Rajapaksas had been building this Muslim terrorist narrative against Ranil and the UNP government even before the Easter bombings.
For this, they used Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, who had created problems between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil, while suppressing allegations against the Avant-Garde leader, a close associate of Gotabaya.
When the UNP pressured Maithripala Sirisena to remove Wijeyadasa from the posts of Minister of Justice and Buddha Sasana for damaging the government from within, Maithri reluctantly agreed.
After being removed from his ministerial post, Wijeyadasa began accusing the government leadership of pampering Muslim terrorists on behalf of the Rajapaksas.
When the Easter bomb exploded, Gotabaya joined the race, saying that what Wijeyadasa had said earlier had now been proven correct.
But today, the Easter bomb has been turned into a weapon against the Rajapaksas and the Pohottuwa, who once turned the UNP into the scapegoat.
That did not happen because of anyone else.
It happened because of Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the JVP.
If this political reversal is viewed correctly, the UNP and the Samagi Jana Balawegaya should be offering flowers and lamps to Anura.
SOURCE:- SRI LANKA GUARDIAN
