Former MP Udaya Gammanpila stated today (21 October) that they will seek to impeach President Anura Kumara Dissanayake after being elected to Parliament in the upcoming General Election. The impeachment will be pursued due to the President's failure to publish two committee reports on the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks, which were commissioned by former President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Speaking at a media briefing, Gammanpila alleged that President Dissanayake and his government were reluctant to release the reports because one of them directly accuses retired SDIG Ravi Seneviratne, then head of the CID and now Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security, of neglecting intelligence warnings prior to the attacks. The report also contains allegations against former CID Director Shani Abeysekara, and mentions 17 other officials. Gammanpila claimed that this was why the President was hesitant to make the reports public.

He further argued that, under the Constitution, the President cannot violate the people's right to information and abuse his powers, which would constitute grounds for impeachment. "He has deliberately violated the Constitution," Gammanpila said.

“Therefore, once we are elected, we will move forward with an impeachment under Article 38 of the Constitution against the President for these violations. They tried to conceal the reports because Dissanayake is not a capable president. His appointments of Ravi Seneviratne as Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security and Nandika Sanath Kumanayake as the President’s Secretary are problematic. Ravi Seneviratne has a case pending against him, and neither he nor Shani Abeysekara should have been appointed to their positions,” Gammanpila stressed.

"He must remove Ravi seneviratne from the post and extend an apology to the public. If he fails to fulfil these two conditions we will bring an impeachement against him once we elected to Parliament," he said. 

Publishing these reports was the President's responsibility, Gammanpila noted, adding that no one else could make them public as they were submitted to him. "He didn’t do that and instead tried to protect his supporters," he alleged.

The reports in question were prepared by committees led by S.I. Imam and A.N.J. de Alwis. The S.I. Imam report was submitted to the former President on 25 June 2024, while the A.N.J. de Alwis report was handed over on 14 September 2024. These reports investigated the role of intelligence services during the Easter Sunday attacks and addressed allegations raised in a documentary by the United Kingdom's Channel 4. The committee chaired by retired Judge A.N.J. de Alwis specifically examined the involvement of intelligence services in the attacks.