Foreign Minister Ali Sabry has met the American Ambassador to Sri Lanka Julie Chung before leaving for a visit to America. About the meeting with Ali Sabry, Julie Chung said in a twitter message that Ali Sabri’s visit to the US is to discuss many bilateral issues. Among them Sri Lanka’s human rights is top in the agenda. Before Ali Sabri’s visit to America, President Ranil Wickremesinghe made a controversial speech in Parliament
Before Ranil’s speech Mahinda Rajapaksa joined the budget debate and said that Gotabaya’s government was overthrown by foreign forces. After Mahinda’s speech, Ranil said that puppet rulers like Dinh Diem in Vietnam will not be allowed to emerge in Sri Lanka. A weekend newspaper has reported that when he came to his parliamentary office after making that speech, the ministers asked him who Dinh Diem was. Then he said that Dinh Diem was a former American puppet ruler in Vietnam and that he joined the cardinal of Vietnam and killed Buddhists.
This explanation indicates why he spoke about Dinh Diem in Parliament. It seems it is his opinion that it is America who started the struggle in Sri Lanka and Cardinal helped it and America wanted to appoint a puppet ruler. He has used his parliamentary speech to threaten that he will not allow another struggle and the installing of an American puppet.
Dinh Diem was a former powerful politician in South Vietnam. He was born in a Catholic family. His brother was a Catholic priest later became a cardinal. Dinh Diem also planned to become a Catholic priest, but later abandoned that idea and joined the civil service in South Vietnam. He has created a new party by bringing together the nationalist forces against communism and imperialism in Vietnam. Because he was a threat to the rule of the Vietnamese emperor at that time, he is afraid of his threats on his life and he fled from Vietnam. Later, he came to Vietnam and became the Prime Minister of Vietnam and then the President with the support of Western countries led by America. He was helped by his brother Cardinal to become Prime Minister and President. He was later assassinated in a military coup.
Ranil wanted to tell about Dinh Diem to disturb America and Cardinal. Ali Sabri goes to America after this speech. It is not certain that America will teach him a good lesson about Dinh Diem in America.
When USAID’s chief visited India recently, he said Sri Lanka’s economic crisis is mainly due to the Chinese debt trap. Before Ali Sabry departed to Amarica in an interview with Indian media he said there it no truth in Chinese debt trap it is all fabricated stories. Most possibly, ‘debt trap’ could be the second lesson Ali Sabry learns from America.