Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the former defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa should not have been charge of the Sri Lanka’s national security as he was a US citizen who had “renounced any allegiance to Sri Lanka”, in a speech to parliament last week.
Speaking in Sinhala, Mr Wickremesinghe told lawmakers that Mr Rajapaksa “was in-charge of people who were bearing arms for the republic of Sri Lanka, while he under law, was obliged to bear arms for the United States of America”.
The Prime Minister went on to state that if the United States had gone to war with Sri Lanka, then Mr Rajapaksa would have fought alongside the Americans against Sri Lanka.
Mr Wickremesinghe, who currently faces a no-confidence motion backed by almost 100 MPs, also went on to attack Palita Kohona, an Australian citizen who was the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Sri Lanka.
“An American citizen was in-charge of the national security while an Australian citizen was in-charge of the foreign service, but you had never chosen to question on these matters,” he said.
See his speech (in Sinhala) below.