When I arrived in Colombo shortly after the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks, what struck me most was the jarring contrast between pre- and post-attack protocols. Before the bombings, vehicles pulled up unchallenged at five-star hotel lobbies. Guests checked in with heavy luggage that went unscreened. Terrorists had booked rooms, assembled AK-47s over room service, and at brunch hour that Easter Sunday, calmly took positions and opened fire on families in a coordinated assault that also targeted churches.
After the bombings, everything changed. Vehicle barriers, baggage scanners, metal detectors, CCTV grids—all appeared overnight. The capacity had always existed. The will had not.
Now a Sri Lankan court has sentenced the former police chief and former defense secretary to death for criminal negligence. It is a verdict that offers public catharsis, yet dangerously obscures a deeper truth: this tragedy was not the fault of two men. It was the predictable outcome of a security apparatus sabotaged by political machinations.
The intelligence was remarkably specific. India had warned Sri Lanka seventeen days before the attacks, naming targets and individuals. The warning was repeated twice more, including two hours before the first detonation. Indian intelligence had even monitored the group’s communications. Yet nothing was done.
Why? Because at the very moment these warnings arrived, Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister were locked in a bitter constitutional feud. The president—who also served as defense minister, police minister, and chair of the National Security Council—deliberately excluded the prime minister from all security meetings. The National Security Council met on April 9; when the defense secretary asked for a briefing on the attack ringleader, the intelligence chief merely promised to “send a note later.” That note never came. A parliamentary committee later concluded that if the matter had been properly discussed, the attacks could have been prevented.
This was not a failure of policing. It was a failure of leadership at the highest political level—a system where national security became hostage to partisan rivalry. The police chief and defense secretary were scapegoats for a fractured command chain with no clear decision-maker, no enforced protocols, and no mechanism to ensure intelligence translated into action.
The lesson transcends Sri Lanka. Every small island state, with its limited resources and interdependent security architecture, is vulnerable to the same dysfunction. When national security councils become extensions of political machinations, when meetings are convened ad hoc and key voices excluded, when intelligence is siloed rather than shared—the result is not just inefficiency, but lethal vulnerability.
A robust national security council must be non-political by design. Its membership should be fixed by statute, not by executive whim. Its protocols must be binding—requiring that specific intelligence be acted upon within defined timeframes. It must include independent technical advisors beyond political dismissal. And it must have a clear, unified chain of command that bypasses partisan disputes. In a crisis, there is no room for “who is in charge?”—the answer must be self-evident and uncontested.
The Sri Lankan case also exposes the fallacy of post-facto security upgrades. The hotel screenings and vehicle checks that appeared after the bombings were not innovations; they were existing best practices that simply required political direction to implement. The absence of that direction before the attacks was not an oversight—it was a choice, born of a leadership more concerned with power than with protection.
The death sentence against Jayasundara and Fernando may satisfy a thirst for accountability, but it risks letting the truly responsible parties off the hook. The Supreme Court has already ordered the former president and top officials to pay civil compensation—an acknowledgment that culpability stretches far higher. Yet even that misses the institutional cure.
The real question for any nation is not “who will we blame?” but “how do we ensure this cannot happen here?” The answer lies in depoliticising national security—creating a council that operates above the fray, with clear legal mandates, mandatory intelligence sharing, and an unbreakable chain of accountability from warning to action.
Because when warnings are ignored and systems fail, the cost is measured not in political capital, but in 279 lives—including 45 foreigners, families at brunch, and a nation left to ask why nobody listened.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 