Mr. Godfrey Gunatilleke’s text cannot be frontally critiqued either conceptually or concretely, because it is argumentatively impregnable and because the civil society critics just are not good enough. It cannot be dismissed as Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism or neo-conservative militarism because Godfrey is neither Buddhist nor a neo-conservative, states Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, referring to the Working Paper entitled ‘Truth and Accountability: The Last Stages of the War in Sri Lanka’, prepared and presented by Godfrey Gunatilleke at the seminar on ‘Accountability, Restorative Justice and Reconciliation’ on July 21, 2011, at the MARGA Institute.

“It cannot be brushed aside as resulting from regime patronage or a wish for such…” Dr. Jayatilleka adds.

He further says, “Ironically, the chief contributors to the MARGA seminar, Godfrey Gunatilleke and David Blacker (a war veteran and award winning writer of English prose), who are neither Sinhala-Buddhist nor subscribe to such fundamentalist notions of Sri Lanka’s identity, have produced a far more serious and sophisticated critique of the Darusman report and a credible, analytically solid, alternative interpretative framework of the war’s last stages, than have any ideologue or spokesperson for narrow nationalism”.

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