Parliamentary Select Committee has accused President Maithripala Sirisena of actively undermining government and security systems, leading to serious lapses ahead of the Easter terror attacks.

The PSC, in its report which was tabled in the House yesterday, said the President “failed in numerous occasions to give leadership and also actively undermined government and systems, including having ad hoc NSC [National Security Council] meetings”, and leaving out key individuals from those discussions.

Further, it said Sri Lanka’s intelligence chief had failed to act on multiple terror warnings received ahead of the April 21 bombings. “This failure by the SIS [State Intelligence Service] has resulted in hundreds of deaths, many more injured and immeasurable devastation to Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans and that must not be treated lightly,” the report said.

The report also observed that it is important to ascertain whether those with vested interests did not act on intelligence reports in order to create chaos and instil fear and uncertainty in the lead up to the Presidential election. Such a situation then would lead to the call for a change of regime to contain such acts of terrorism.