On November 24, 2011, the headline story of ‘The Island’ newspaper was that a diplomat of the American Embassy in Sri Lanka told a powerful minister in Mahinda’s government to release General Fonseka who was in prison at that time. It said that the USA would initiate a UNHRC resolution against Sri Lanka if Sarath Fonseka was not released. Subsequently, Mahinda’s government said this was said to then Sri Lanka Freedom Party General Secretary Minister Maithripala Sirisena. The government said that the American Deputy Ambassador summoned Maithripala Sirisena to the embassy and this warning was given.
Subsequently, the American Embassy in Sri Lanka issued a statement saying that the conversation between a US Embassy official and Sri Lankan minister was not reported accurately. After 13 years, Maithripala Sirisena has again said that a diplomat from the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka told him that India planned the Easter bomb.
Maithripala Sirisena contested the 2015 presidential election wearing the jacket of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and pretending to be Modi. He went to India as soon as he became president. He invited Indian Prime Minister Modi to visit Sri Lanka and Modi came to Sri Lanka. After that, he said in the cabinet that the Indian intelligence service was plotting to kill him. Later, the Presidential Secretariat said that he did not make such a statement. After that, he said that Ranil is conspiring to break the relationship between him and Modi. After the Easter bombings, the Indian Prime Minister visited St Anthony’s Church which was attacked on Easter Sunday. A photograph of Maithripala Sirisena holding an umbrella to Modi caused controversy in the country’s social media. Similarly, Maithripala Sirisena presented a Samadhi Buddha statue to Modi and tweeted that it was a special gift from a special friend.
In 2019, after Maithripala Sirisena retired from the presidency, he visited India for the first time and asked for an opportunity to meet Modi. But he did not get that chance. He planned to go to India first and then to America to show that he has the support of America and India to be the presidential candidate like in 2015. He did not get a good response from India. He met only a deputy secretary of the US State Department in America.
Mahinda’s advisor Sajin Vass Gunawardena took Maithripala Sirisena to America and India. Sajin Vaas had brought former British Defense Secretary Liam Fox’s assistant, Werritty, to Sri Lanka several times to get Fox’s support for Mahinda’s government. This was one of the reasons why Fox was forced to resign as Secretary of Defense. The result was Britain’s increased opposition to Mahinda’s government. Maithrie’s story that India was involved in the Easter bomb may also be an international trick like Foxe’s trick. Like Fox’s trick backfired on Mahinda, the bomb trick seems to have backfired on Maithripala Sirisena.
