The greatest political robbery!

The advent of Chandrika Kumaratunge on Sri Lankan political firmament brought a new perspective on the country’s vexed conflict. She advocated that the ‘only solution to the on going North East conflict was the bifurcation of the country in to ethnically concentrated regions with legislative assemblies’.

She not only used all government means to brainwash the Sri Lankan public to believe that the answer to terrorism was accommodating terrorist with legitimate political power but also propagated her convoluted logic abroad giving credence to the extremist Tamil expatriates who had been conducting a malicious and virulent anti Sri Lankan campaign internationally.

Ranil Wickremesinghe who was hatchings his ambitions to become the President, did his own calculations and realizing that he could not become the President without a sizeable chunk of the ‘minority vote’, took the cue from Chandrika and started campaigning more vigorously on the ‘minority grievances’ with the view of beating Chandrika to the post at the next election.

The more they campaigned to outbid each other the more the West became interested in the Sri Lankan issue as an opportunity to bifurcate Sri Lanka and destabilize the entire South Asian region to consolidate their own power. Hence Norway was assigned as a cat’s paw ‘Peace Envoy’ to strengthen the LTTE.

High risk destination

This plan worked quite well; the situation Sri Lanka was going from bad to worse and by 2005 the Sri Lankan Government had created a goliath out of the LTTE. They attacked the airport and the harbour, made Sri Lanka a high risk destination to the international community, insurance facilitators and made the country’s economy reach a new law of negative growth. Ranil Wickremesinghe was begging Prabhakaran for peace sending one watered down ‘peace proposal’ after another which Prabhakaran disposed with contempt. Chandrika, having dumped Ranil for ‘endangering national security’ nevertheless continued with Ranil’s CFA and further endangered the country’s security pushing Sri Lanka to the verge of being declared a ‘failed State’.

The national and international power of the LTTE was such that the country had no alternative but to prostrate in earnest before the ‘worst terrorist’ who alone would decide the fate of this country’s 20 million inhabitants. This incidentally was the same LTTE leader who in 1991 begged the Premadasa’s Government for arms to fight for survival against the Tamil National Army. This, in short, was the precipice to which the ‘political solutions’ of Ranil and Chandrika pushed the country into.

Then came the Presidential elections of 2005. Ranil gave an undertaking to the Norwegian financed ‘National Peace Council’ that negotiation with the LTTE was the only way to solve the ‘ethnic crisis’.

The fact that the LTTE had never negotiated anything with anyone up to that time and all what they had done was to fight their way through taking advantage of negotiations, did not occur to Ranil and he further agreed to accept the worlds most ruthless terror outfit as the only representative of the Tamils.

He promised ‘Dhal and Sprats’ to the Sinhalese voter and North and East (political solution) to the LTTE. Mahinda, on the other hand said, that he did not believe negotiating the LTTE was the only way out, promised to preserve the territorial integrity of the country and even in the heart of Jaffna he told the Tamils that ‘he would not bifurcate the country’.

Chandrika who opposed Ranil all this while for her own power, now supported him to protect the colonial minded Colombo7 class against the upstart, Mahinda from the village. Chandrka’s Government media propagated Ranil’s ‘peace plans’ and his ‘vision’ while falling only short of calling Mahinda a ‘war monger’.

The SLFP as a political party, practically had disowned its own candidate and hence Mahinda had to fight alone battle against local and external ‘big money’ to win the Presidency by the lowest of majorities. That probably was Sri Lanka’s most fateful Presidential election.

Mahinda Rajapaksa was the first ‘ordinary Sri Lankan’ to become the head of State in independent Sri Lanka. Almost all his predecessors were from the missionary educated class who viewed all Sri Lankan problems from a colonial class-conscious perspective.

Rajapaksa was the first Sri Lankan leader who was not afraid to air his humble Sinhala views on the Sri Lankan issues. He realized that Prabhakaran had to be defeated and ordinary Tamils should be salvaged from his Jackboot. A view, that was castigated as ‘extreme Sinhala Buddhist’ and ‘ultra nationalist’ up to then, by the missionary educated Ranil- Chandrika class.

As expected Prabhakaran pushed Mahinda too, to the wall, but the response this time was different. Mahinda did not go to consult the Co- Chairs but instead he responded in the inimitable village way of ‘tucking up his sarong’! The aggressor received a bigger doze of his own medicine.

Thus the crimes of a megalomaniac who haunted this nation for thirty four years was brought to an end in just two years and a few months. The fact of the matter was that the Sri Lankan Forces always had the capacity to defeat the LTTE but the Sri Lankan leadership, specially the ‘Ranil Candrika’ class were too servile to their ex-colonial masters and their double-edged political theories. And with their own vested interests, they were inherently anti ‘Sinhala ordinary’.

The elimination of Prabhakaran has made these colonial agents ‘think afresh’ in their new strategy to capture power, as it has now become very obvious that Mahinda is riding an unprecedented waive of popularity after his war victory.

Political leadership

Their ‘tale carrying’ to the International community to embarrass the government has not taken them anywhere.

Hence they have now wooed the biggest ‘war monger’ in the Mahinda camp with the promise of the highest political position in the country to become Mahinda’s rival. They now claim that the war was won by the army and not by Mahinda’s political leadership. The man Mahinda used to destroy Prabhakaran only because that man was ‘as good a megalomaniac as Prabhakaran was’, is now being hired by the Ranil Chandrika camp as a political leader to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa. This incidentally, is the same man they accused of killing Lasantha Wickrematunge (Hanzard), their favourite defender of Prabhakaran and of fighting the war like an asinine bull!

This particular act should, of all the things, expose this anti national camp as the real warmongers who were parading in ‘peace clothes’ for power. But the irony however is that some political dunderheads in Sri Lanka still believe in these anti national elements to be their avowed national leaders as if they were born only yesterday!

If such a grand robbery of political vision is allowed to pass in the Sri Lankan political arena then it should be reasonable for a robber to expect the Sri Lankan law to grant him legitimacy for all the loot he had robbed from others. Ranil Wickremesinghe who is being projected as ‘Mr Clean’ and as a ‘man of principles’ has now changed his principles for sheer political expediency twice; first to beat Chandrika and then to beat Mahinda.

His only principle seemed to be ‘political power at any cost’. His mission is not to, look for power to implement a particular political policy, but rather to look for any policy to come to power for powers own sake. For that he will beg, borrow or steel! [email protected]