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| Saturday, 26 June 2004 |
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Fear of challenging the people's mandate by Lucien Rajakarunanayake So the Opposition did carry out its threat, but not in full measure. Its letter to the Speaker had 114 signatories, four short of the promised 118, expressing their revulsion at the alleged terror tactics carried out within Parliament by the Government. They charged that if allowed to continue, such behaviour would destroy the foundations of a democratic society. Two cheers for that and not anymore. It's the kind of politically wimpish action one can expect from the UNP leadership today. For those who embrace such leadership, there is nothing but public opprobrium in store. The 114 signatures of the Joint Opposition do not amount to such a big achievement, given the fact that the Government's present 106 members is due to the peculiarity of our constitution. Strangely, from the time the Opposition began forming its alliance of the most strange bedfellows, - such as the Jathika Hela Urumaya, the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress to name just a few, they kept insisting they will not topple this government, although they commanded a larger number of seats in the House. What a pathetic display of defeatism. You boast of having a larger number of seats in the House. You claim that the larger number of people in fact voted for the parties now in Opposition. But, you cannot form a government, and have to keep reminding the people that the Opposition Alliance is not to defeat it. It is obvious that these alliance builders whether of the tiger stripe or the yellow robe are obviously fearful of challenging the people's mandate. Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe says the government not having a majority is trying to kick the sovereignty of the people (Anuradhapura, Sunday 20), although he gives no examples of such political football. The fact remains that the Opposition even with its 114 or 118 a signatures is a badly fragmented one that cannot field a team to kick the overall mandate given to the UPFA, by electing it the party with the single largest number of seats. A false mandate When it comes to the larger number of seats in the Opposition, the observations of Mr. John Cushnahan, Chief Observer of the EU Election Observers, gives the lie to the Opposition's claim that it represents a much larger number of people, than the 45+ percentage the UPFA obtained. The EU elections observers were clear and emphatic in their view that the April 2 General Election was democratic, except for the North & East. The report said inter alia that in this year's elections the major incidents of violence originated with the LTTE, whereas in the earlier elections, the primary source of violence was the two major parties. "The LTTE was determined to ensure that the Tamil National Alliance would emerge as the sole representative of the Tamil people. As a consequence, the violence denied the right of all parties to campaign freely in all parts of the country, especially the North-East." "The events that took place in that part of Sri Lanka were totally unacceptable and are the antithesis of democracy". What all this simply means is that all this talk of the Opposition having a majority in the House, is more than a hoax, it's an open violation of the democratic intentions of the majority of our people, and an affront to the democratic spirit of the people. The 22 MPs of the ITAK (TNA) that the UNP boasts as being part of the Opposition Alliance, pusillanimous though it may be, are persons who really have no right to be in a democratic assembly of people's representatives. They are political charlatans, masquerading as the people's representatives, not giving the LTTE any legitimacy to claim sole representation of the Tamil people, due to its sheer magnitude of fraud and violence in electioneering. |
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