Ghosts of the Old Regime Still Haunt Our System - Justice Minister

COLOMBO (News 1st); Sri Lanka’s Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara has declared that political corruption at the highest levels of government has been eradicated, but warned that remnants of the old system continue to resist reform from within the bureaucracy.

Nanayakkara said the public had for years underestimated the devastating consequences of electing corrupt leaders. “They kept on electing people they jolly well knew were engaged in corrupt practices,” he said. “They thought nothing would go wrong. But by the time they believed us, people had died from substandard medicine, others had gone blind, and the economy had collapsed.”

Representing the National People’s Power (NPP) and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), Nanayakkara reflected on the party’s years-long struggle to raise awareness about the dangers of corruption. “We told them: you will die with bad medicine, you will eat substandard food, all because you’re not fighting corruption. Nobody believed us—until it was too late.”

He noted that even Sri Lanka’s judiciary has begun to explicitly link corruption to the country’s economic downfall in recent rulings. “Some of the judgments being delivered today clearly state that corruption is one of the root causes of our economic crisis,” he said.

While celebrating the elimination of corruption at the top—among ministry secretaries and board chairpersons—Nanayakkara acknowledged that the problem persists further down the chain. 

“There are still bugs in the system that need to be debugged,” he said. “But this is not to upset the hardworking, honest bureaucrat in all these agencies. There are good men. There are good women. But the problem is, still at some decision making places, you still have the ghosts of the old regime..”

He warned that these entrenched elements are actively resisting the government’s new anti-corruption systems. “Whenever we try to implement reforms, the old system pushes back. But we are committed to seeing this through.”