SLPP Colombo District Parliamentarian and former Public Security Minister Rear Admiral (Retd) Sarath Weerasekera said that certain anti-Government elements are trying to make the future of the country’s younger generation bleak by demanding the youth to come to Colombo on August 9 to engage in violent demonstrations.
The sole responsibility of parents who really love their children is to prevent them from joining such violent demonstrations as unpatriotic leaders behind these demonstrations provoke youth to commit crime by ruining public properties and harassing peace-loving people, MP Weerasekera told the Sunday Observer.
The former Minister said, “There will be nobody to save misguided youngsters when they become helpless before the law by falling prey to criminals. Lawlessness has to be done away with immediately to restore the democratic rights of the people of this country.”
Weerasekera said rebels of any type should be condemned at all times. Those who provoke youth against the Government today will not come to rescue of youth when they fall into trouble before the law after committing.
Local political elements that are now politically bankrupt are behind these youth provocations against the Government and they want to topple the Government forcibly and capture power by hook or by crook even by committing illegal, violent and anti-democratic acts, he said.
He said a youth who becomes a criminal before the law will not be able to get a Police report to get a Government job. Their close family members too would be unable to get a police report as a result of being charged before the law.
He said looting, vandalising or plundering valuable artefacts of antique value at the President’s House, attacking Parliamentarians and burning houses of MPs countrywide and assassinating Parliamentarians cannot be considered as peaceful acts of protesters. Those are heinous criminal acts according to the laws of this country. Can those criminal acts be justified as simple acts of demonstrators?
“I call upon the intelligent youth of this country not be misguided and become puppets of leaders of bankrupt political parties and ruin their future in this moment of crisis,” he added.