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| Wednesday, 14 July 2004 |
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Reactionary hopes shattered, peoples' power strengthened Over 66% of the staunch anti-Tuppahi Southern Province taking the gallant lead, the masses of the six Provinces that went to the poll last Saturday have overwhelmingly backed the Government to carry forward without any fear and favour the Rata Perata programme launched through the people's verdict of the April General Election to put a halt to supine appeasement of the terrorists, to safeguard the unity and sovereignty of the nation, to employ a firm stop to draining of the nation's wealth by treacherous rogue-elements and impose severe and just punishment to those who robbed, plunged, sold and misappropriated the country's wealth, prevent oppression of the rural masses by a minority of the urbanites and launch development programmes focused on and targeted for rural development. The Alliance has comfortably won all the six provinces, securing 195 of the 316 Provincial Council seats amounting to 67% of the seats. The results have sent shock waves to the reactionary treacherous UNP and its cronies including the terrorist outfit as all of them expected an outcome favourable to them mainly because the Government during its short span of power could not make any substantial improvement in bringing down the cost of living, although several meaningful steps were taken to arrest the trend. The people's verdict has clearly rejected the legitimacy of many of the UNP giants' right to remain and continue as Members of Parliament, including the Speaker Mr. Lokubandara. People of his own constituency Haputale have rejected the Speaker Lokubandara's legitimacy. If this election was taken as by-elections of the olden days, many would have been forced to be home-bound today, but how can one expect them to be such puritans when 14 ex-Ministers are still occupying their former official residences as trespassers upholding the collective Dharmishta/Dharma Rajya concept. In our Matara vernacular they are a lot of Dummala gahalawath elawanna beri Yakku" They are a set of demons who cannot be chased out even by thrusting Dummala (a powdered stuff used for dispelling evil spirits in Thowil rituals). In the overwhelming people's mandate, Freedom Alliance has won all the six provinces for which elections were held. With the Wayamba Province won earlier, the Alliance now holds undisputed power and backing of the people, all over the country including the North and East where the terrorist gang robbed 22 Parliamentary seats forcibly stuffing only 34% of the Tamil votes in the greatest 'Election Robbery'. If not for the assistance of Mr. Arumugam Thondaman's CWC, it would have been a total defeat for UNP in all the eight districts that constituted the six provinces. It would have been an unprecedented defeat for the UNP in Sri Lanka's election history. The 83,450 votes polled in the Nuwara Eliya district, undoubtedly a bulk constituting CWC votes, helped the UNP to save its skin and win the Nuwara Eliya district. Out of the 118 electorates of the six provinces, the Alliance has won 105 constituencies leaving only 13 electorates for UNP. The reactionary clan made every attempt to ensure their victory in the elections. Ranil Wickremasinghe was one of the individuals to cast his vote early in the morning. He toured all the provinces and addressing a rally in Polonnaruwa ridiculed the Alliance for cheating the masses by making false promises in the general election, completely forgetting the whimsy promises he himself made in 2001 and during the campaign for the April General Election, and claimed that the Alliance had lost its mandate within three months. The UNP that adopts all devious and uncivilized methods of cheating in elections, and is responsible for introducing the horrendous election culture of mass-scale rigging, impersonation, elimination of opponents, confiscation of ballot boxes, terrorization and or prevention of opponents polling agents etc, employed the same irregular methods in this election too. A supporter of the Freedom Alliance was shot dead and several others were injured in Ratnapura. Organised by several UNP Parliamentarians, an Alliance rally was disrupted and Alliance supporters were severely assaulted by UNP thugs in Medirigiriya. Shamelessly forgetting the utter neglect of rural masses during its 2 years of terrorist appeasement rule, it launched a bogus programme to meet the rural masses by house-to-house visits by Parliamentarians in an attempt to cheat the people. On the part of the Government the campaign was led by the Prime Minister, and all Ministers, Parliamentarians and Party leaders of the Alliance endeavoured with honesty and dedication to convince the masses on the determination of the Government to rebuild the nation under the Rata Perata programme and usher in a peaceful and strong nation for the posterity. The President thanking the people for reposing their trust in the Government has assured the people fulfillment of their aspirations. She has called upon the masses to shed petty differences and work towards the development of the country. The Prime Minister has said that people have reassured their support to the Freedom Alliance by placing their faith in them once again and strengthened the Government motto of Rata Perata. The main Alliance partner JVP paying tribute to the progressive forces for bringing this victory has said that it taught a thundering lesson for the reactionary forces who were conspiring against the forward march of the Alliance Government. It adds that the results prove that 'media terrorism' could not submerge the power of the people. Leading figures in the UNP have so far failed to comment on the election outcome. UNP's so-called spokesman, the publicity obsessed Garrulous Peiris, always jumping ahead to make comments uninvited, unsolicited and irrelevantly seems to be missing from the scene from the day of Black Tiger Jayarani's Kollupitiya blast. In the place of garrulous Peiris some amateurish spokesmen have surfaced to comment on behalf of the UNP. Without any reason to attribute for their colossal defeat and unable to accept defeat in a gentlemanly manner, they have said that the low turn out was an indication of people's dissatisfaction with the Government's programmes and people are distancing from supporting the Government. It is similar to the old adage of denying non-presence of sand on the moustache after falling down. Dharmarajya JHU has adopted the same dualist approach it adopted at the time of the election of the Speaker. While deceptively claiming it opposes Provincial Councils, it planned to hold a protest march from Matara to Colombo as an indirect move to build up support for the UNP election campaign. A meeting in this regard was held in no other place than at the residence of Mr. Mahinda Wijesekera, who was in charge of UNP election campaign in the Matara district. Matara to Colombo march was later revised, mainly due to apprehension of success and uncertainty of sufficient participation, to have two meetings and a March from Kalutara to Colombo. In the meetings and in the march and through JHU affiliated organisations, it distributed leaflets campaigning for the UNP. The leaflet was under the title 'Defeat Freedom Alliance which attempts to destroy Buddha Sasana and Sinhalese Nation'. By this notice, it blatantly called upon the people to vote for the UNP. Surprisingly it has now issued a statement saying that people had rejected anti-Sinhala Buddhist policies of the UNP. By this statement they have needlessly antagonized their good Samaritans Ravi Karunanayake and Jayalath Jayawardene who in a jet speed took their MP monks for treatment of alleged injuries suffered in Parliament. The self-contradictory Sri Lanka Muslim Congress issuing a usual hollow statement has said that people are obviously disgusted with the two parties and have no confidence in either. It further says that these parties have continued to mislead the people. If these parties are misleading the people why has it allowed its members to take up membership in the UNP, reportedly even contravening the Party Constitution for the sake of taking oaths as National List MPs. This inapt Political Party would have suffered a thundering and humiliating defeat if the voting was high and on the normal scale. Only CWC has announced a fair assessment. The Party spokesman Muthu Sivalingam has stated that low voting can be attributed to less enthusiasm in the people due to frequent elections. Through this election people have once again expressed their firm trust in the Alliance Government and the politicians and their solidarity and determination to help the Government to rebuild the nation and usher in a rich nation to their posterity. The Government should not take the verdict as an open warrant or a blank cheque to take any step they deem necessry contravening the aspirations and the desires of the people. It is the duty and obligation of the Government to take all and every measures without any fear and favour to fulfill the aspirations of the masses and return the nation to its prestigious glory of the past. A. A. M. NIZAM, Learned Professor's utterances UNP spokesman and MP professor G.L. Peiris has said the government's only intention was to remain in power by fishing out MPs from other parties. (Page 3 DN May 27). I would ask the learned professor how he happens to be in the UNP now. He has forgotten that towards the end of 2000, the learned professor along with eleven MPs from the PA was fished out by the UNP. Professor also says Freedom Alliance has so far failed to show any signs of fulfilling any of their election pledges. Professor seems to be deaf and blind for good things done by the Alliance. He is not aware that within one week of assuming office, Alliance has brought down the price of Urea and that they have arranged to employ 30,000 unemployed graduates. This is the characteristic of the Professor to utter falsehood and hoodwink the people. When he was in the PA, he presented the so called 'Package' but nothing came out of it. Similarly, after joining UNP, he was leading the 'Peace Process' but nothing happened excepting the professor had the opportunity of trotting the globe to attend peace meetings at the expense of the voter. Professor is good at uttering deliberate lies and that may be the reason why he has been appointed as the UNP spokesman. T. J. V. Silva, Railway authorities have blamed the recent spate of derailments on poor maintenance due to lack of funds. This avenue of explanation is the easiest way out and this is not the first time that this institution has probably got away with it. Minister Felix Perera would do well to have the statistics on derailments in the past thoroughly examined by competent people. He might well find that these derailments do occur on occasion and much more pronounced when a government other than a UNP government is in power. Immediately after Leslie Goonewardene took over as Minister of Transport, derailments occurred one after another. Everything seemed under control after 1977 although there would have been one occasionally. Then again, derailments after 1994 and of course, a lull in the two and a half years after 2001. The Minister need not and should not always be led by his officials. He must get to the bottom of it and what better way than to examine statistics and satisfy himself that there is no pattern to the derailments and the attendant damage necessitating repair at immense cost to the exchequer. Poor maintenance is just one side of the story. The maintenance during Leslie Goonewardene's tenure could not have been as bad as at present! I. P. C. Mendis, |
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