People rejoice over Kilinochchi victory
WIJITHA NAKKAWITA
People came out on the streets. Even children
raised their voices in praise of the armed forces who captured the
terrorist leader Prabhakaran’s main stronghold Kilinochchi on Friday as
the new year 2009 celebrations were only a day behind them. Louder than
the fireworks the voice of the people rose.
Reminiscent of the ancient Latin adage, ‘Vox populi, vox dei’- the
voice of the people is the voice of gods. Yet behind the scene there was
another group of people accustomed to believe or even pretend to believe
that the terrorist leader who as a young man with megalomaniacal
ambitions committed atrocious crimes to come to top of the LTTE could
not be defeated conferring invincibility to this ruthless terrorist and
his fighters mostly dragged away from the school rooms to fight for his
ambition.
Most of this second group were elected representatives of the people
debating in Parliament, some with emphasis laid on stock phrases often
aimed at subterfuge and even Goebel’s theory that a lie repeated often
enough would make people believe it was the truth.
On each occasion when the extension of the State of Emergency was
debated in the Parliament these champions of defeatism kept on severely
criticising the government and even the armed forces not sparing even
the defenceless officers including the army hierarchy with invective and
hyperbole questioning the veracity of the achievements of the armed
forces.
We remember very clearly UNP’s Lakshman Kiriella telling Parliament
that when the LTTE cadres defeated at Thoppigala were fleeing had left
behind hundreds of weapons to be used again when they would come back to
the region. He said a person who had seen the weapons being taken from
Thoppigala by the terrorist had told someone.
The other Lakshman from Badulla, Seneviratne was heard saying that
the figures of casualties presented in the House by Premier Ratnasiri
Wickramanayake were not the accurate numbers of our soldiers who had
died in battle.
There was always this undercurrent of dubiousness among such members
that the war against Prabhakaran’s so-called invincible terrorist group
could not be won and the government was putting on a propaganda ploy to
keep the public mind happy.
It clearly appeared in such debates in the House that the main
Opposition party seemed to say that more soldiers were dying but they
possibly believed that soldiers or even others should not die. It was
the main thrust of the parliamentary debate till very recent times but
during the last debate some UNP members said they congratulated the
armed forces - a latter day realization perhaps.
This ailment of assigning invincibility to the common terrorist group
as some super force had arisen out of a media myth that had infiltrated
to the mindset of past rulers who had started various counter productive
exercises like the Sudu Nelum movement for peace or the next attempt by
the UNP leader Wickremesinghe who had almost fallen at the feet of the
international peace facilitator to sign a ceasefire agreement virtually
thrust on him to acknowledge the terrorist group on par with the
democratically elected government of Sri Lanka going as far as to give a
legal semblance to areas under their purview.
So leader after leader from as far as back the Thimpu talks during
the J.R.Jayewardene government, the LTTE boss had successfully taken
almost all national leaders down the garden path using each round of
peace talks to collect more funds from the Tamil diaspora and some of
the friendly foreign elements to purchase a huge arsenal while the armed
forces were kept confined to their barracks conveniently.
In the parliamentary debates the UNP members, at least most of them
waxed eloquent against the war on terrorism but did not acknowledge that
the armed forces had started winning battle after battle against the
LTTE starting from Mavil Aru the first fiasco suffered by the terrorists
after a very many years.
During one emergency debate a member of the Illankai Thamil Arasu
Kachchi also known as Tamil National Alliance was heard telling the
government to keep 50,000 coffins ready if it was not prepared to stop
the war against terrorists and enter into peace talks with them.
Each time the Prime Minister asked the Opposition to cooperate in
extending the State of Emergency in Parliament for one more month the
UNP group not only questioned the veracity of the successes of the armed
forces reported, they stayed out during the vote on the extension of the
state of emergency.
That was the way the main opposition party helped the war effort and
the war against terrorism. The emergency debate - the country was facing
an emergency situation with terrorism - was made a forum to not only
criticise the government but also some of the heads of the defence
establishment.
For a moment the main opposition party did not stop to think that
real people of this country were dying in the armed conflict and in mass
murder committed by the LTTE when they exploded bombs in buses, trains
or the streets.
One cannot remember the main opposition party telling the government
in any debate in Parliament that they will forget all differences and
extend its cooperation to the armed forces to win the war on terrorism.
The emergency debate in Parliament was always used by the main
opposition party and of course the Tamil National Alliance to
continuously emphasise that the war had to be stopped at all costs.
But they conveniently forgot that on the side of the government and
the country it was the legitimate armed forces that were fighting to
save the country from a ruthless maniacal terrorist whose record of
killings included Tamil youth who too had taken up arms for the same
cause ( however debatable it may be ) and did not finch at killing human
beings whether they were Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims.
That was why Vinayagamoorthi Muralidaran (Karuna Amman) former
lieutenant of Prbahkaran said at the last emergency debate in Parliament
that Prabhakaran only bequeathed 25,000 graves to the Tamil people and
that he will never agree to any peaceful settlement to benefit the Tamil
people.
However that may be now the next session of Parliament would be
interesting to find out how both these parties were going to voice their
opinions on the fact that the LTTE no longer was invincible - even
Hitler fell - and that he was not the only representative of the
unfortunate Tamil people who had suffered untold hardships to support a
terrorist group going. |