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DateLine Wednesday, 25 February 2009

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Think anew

Government Defence Spokesman Minister Keheliya Rambukwella has understandably laughed off LTTE pleas for a ceasefire. It has been a perennial Tiger ploy to cling to this lifeline whenever it was cornered in the past.

Today it is more than cornered. The outfit is on the verge of annihilation with the troops moving for the kill into the last Tiger bastion which has shrunk to some 60 square kilometres, in the Mulaitivu jungle.

So it is natural that the Tigers have petitioned the UN to broker a ceasefire. According to our front page main story yesterday quoting the Minister, the LTTE has written a letter to the United Nations, Britain, Japan, Norway and the United States indicating it’s readiness to agree to a Ceasefire with the Government, while at the same time refusing to lay down arms.

These are the very Co-Chairs the Tigers had spurned before after several rounds of peace talks. Can one assume it is going to be any different now?

Besides, this call for a ceasefire is a familiar ritual we have all got used to. It follows a pattern when the LTTE is about to be floored. But this time around the Government is calling the shots. It has come to a stage where it is asking LTTE cadres to surrender as against just laying down arms.

This certainly is a sea change in the fortunes of the three-decades-long war which has today been all but won by our valiant forces. It is clear to the outside world that the Government is in firm control of the situation.

It is in this backdrop that a EU call urging the LTTE to participate in a political process is most baffling. A EU Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels has said they were convinced that the long standing conflict in Sri Lanka cannot be resolved by military means. This implies that the EU is still according status to the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil people.

This, despite the overwhelming evidence showing the plight of the Tamils held as captives by the outfit to be used a human shield, not to mention the gunning down of civilians who dare flee into forces’ enclaves.

There is an on going process to hammer out a political solution in the form of the All Party Representative Committee which the EU is well aware of although neither the LTTE or it’s proxies are party to it.

With it’s inhuman face starkly exposed it is difficult to understand as to why the West still considers the LTTE as the sole voice of the Tamils. They should also harken to the many appeals made by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the outfit to surrender arms and enter talks. This despite the overwhelming advantage enjoyed by the President on the military front where he could well afford to dump the LTTE in any equation.

It is time that the international community get rid of this mindset that accords undue status to the LTTE and thinks afresh. This is more so because those whom the LTTE claim to represent are rapidly deserting the outfit - even risking their lives.

They are fleeing from the Tiger domain into the secure arms of the Security Forces. This scenario should prompt the outside world to abandon the LTTE as a viable force which could bring solace to the Tamil people. In any event the outfit is on it’s last legs as seen from last Friday’s incident when it made one last throw of the dice using the last of it’s aircrafts in a failed suicide mission.

True, it could be argued that any settlement could be arrived only between the parties at war. But this equation is no longer valid with the LTTE all but vanquished. The outside world should now look in terms of a post war scenario which has no place for the LTTE.


...And now a different war

Nominations close for the Western Provincial Councils elections tomorrow and city walls are virtually obliterated by a rash of posters of candidates’ mugs, proclaiming to make heaven on earth if elected. In the meantime the Colombo Municipal Council has read the riot against those defacing city walls with even prosecution contemplated according to a recent news item.

There is another war brewing between candidates of the same party vying for space not just on city walls but also on garbage bins, lamp posts and even tress are not spared especially in the suburbs.

Most interesting though are the slogans accompanying candidates’ images on the posters, bordering on the ridiculous to the bizarre. One such poster speaks of a ‘convivial friend of the masses’ though the candidate’s visage is anything but friendly.

No doubt the poster war is bound to reach it’s zenith once nominations close with all it’s spin offs and entertainment viz. the defacement and tarring of opponents’ posters or the fratricidal poster war between fellow candidates.

An order was issued by the Presidential Secretariat barring candidates of the ruling party to carry the President’s picture alongside theirs. But this has for the most part been ignored by candidates especially in the rural areas of the Western Province.

At the last local council elections some candidates in the rural areas carried their aliases by which they are known locally, instead of their real names. Needless to say most of these aliases were the least reputable. It is hoped this time around such posters would be spared the image of the President.

An unrecognized pot of gold

Sri Lanka has a hidden pot of gold and it is green tea. It is similar to the Middle East countries having oil. I tested Sri Lankan green tea obtained from supermarkets. But higher health effects can be achieved if we can use different modern technology to produce our green tea. What should be done is to dig this gold mine of green tea with the support of the Government and make it one of the main income generating avenue for the country.

Full Story

Beginning of economic restructuring

Every form of capitalism has contradictions that eventually bring about a structural crisis of that form of capitalism. In the 1970s the system of state-regulated capitalism, having produced rapid growth and high profits for a few decades, stopped working effectively and went into structural crisis.

Full Story

Bring back the clowns

Human Rights Watch returns to the Ring:

This practice commenced in 2007 when, following the quick and effective operation to liberate the East from the Tigers, HRW delivered a diatribe in which it accused the Government of conducting a Dirty War (a phrase successfully calculated to hit the headlines), of indiscriminately attacking civilians, of ruthlessly displacing people and also of forcibly resettling them.

Full Story

 

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