Sri Lanka the land of the free

Jeanne jayasinghe

Democracy is safe in Sri Lanka. The recently concluded Presidential election in Sri Lanka proves this beyond a doubt. It was indeed a historic election, for many reasons. As everyone has pointed out, these are the first elections held islandwide in a country free of Tiger terrorism. Again as pointed out many times, the entire Tamil population of the country were free to cast their vote freely without hindrance.

The most important fact that makes this the most historic election of all is that the people of Sri Lanka have reached political maturity. The votes have been cast not along a party divide, but across party lines. Voting patterns show that electorates that were traditionally considered as belonging to one or the other of the opposition parties have voted overwhelmingly for the incumbent President.

Yes, detractors can say that the Tamils in the North and the East did not vote for Mahinda Rajapaksa. Here, one cannot negate the TNA factor with its separatist agenda that played the racist card aided and abetted by the Common Candidate and his support base - that has a long history of using race as an election gambit. Yet Tamils and Muslims elsewhere in the Island have voted for Rajapaksa.

Sinhalese have been accused of being “Chauvinistic”, it may seem so to the western analysts. To those who know the Sri Lankan psyche, the voting pattern in this election does not smack of chauvinism. The people voted for Mahinda Rajapaksa not because he was Mahinda Rajapaksa or the incumbent president. The vote was for the stand taken with regard to the war and the pressure exerted by the “international community” to save the LTTE leadership. It was not an anti Tamil vote; it was an anti LTTE vote.

It was a message sent by the Sri Lankan people - not just the Sinhalese - to the Western governments not to interfere in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka. The many attempts made by western agencies during the last stages of the war to invoke the R2P principle and to declare Sri Lanka a ‘failed State’.

The constant threats were issued by the West to charge the Sri Lankan leaders with war crimes, the credence was given to fabricated evidence of these war crimes by agents of the West like Philip Alston.

The law enforcement institutions and Governments allowing the LTTE activists in the West to carry out anti-Sri Lankan demonstrations during the last stages of the war - even when they were breaking the laws of these countries. All this served to infuriate the Sri Lankan population and make them realize the contempt with which the West was treating the people of Sri Lanka. It was not the Sinhalese alone who felt this; there were many Tamils and other minorities who reacted with indignation at this assumption of the West that they had a right to dictate to a sovereign country about the conduct of its affairs.

It was an Anti-West vote

The international media, Western “Political analysts” like Damien Kingsbury and organizations and agencies like HRW and all those other similar organizations and individuals who supported the separatist agenda of the LTTE and championed the LTTE activists in these countries are unable to accept that Sri Lankans like living in a country that is free of terrorism.

It was well known that Western Governments, UK, Canada, Australia, the EU, USA gave all support and succour to the LTTE; allowing them to raise funds to carry out terrorist activities in Sri Lanka. People died in Sri Lanka as a result of the leniency showed by the West to the LTTE.

To the Western media the LTTE were never terrorists, they were either rebels or militants and these terms were used because they could not in all conscience call them freedom fighters or liberators - not when the LTTE was killing more Tamil people in cold blood, than had ever been killed by mob violence during the riots.

Impartial reporting

The Western media provided support by carrying out virulent attacks on Sri Lanka, especially the Sinhala people by always calling this a “conflict between the minority Tamils and the majority Sinhala- Buddhists.” The damage caused to the Sinhalese and especially the Buddhists was of no consequence.

It did not seem to occur to any of these so called investigative journalists who prided themselves on being fair, impartial and accurate in their reporting, to investigate the history of the conflict, to find the root causes embedded in Sri Lanka’s colonial past and the unjustifiable demands made by the Tamil leadership from British colonial times which finally culminated in that very Tamil leadership sacrificing the Tamil youth to gain a separate country over which they could wield power. These investigative journalists stopped their investigations at 1983 - if at all they went further it was only as far back as 1958. To them the claims made by the separatists supporting the LTTE terrorists about discrimination were the gospel truth.

Stemming perhaps from discriminating against minorities practised by all Western Governments, it was too much of stretch of the imagination for Western journalists to believe that a majority had not discriminated against a minority.

That the Tamils of Sri Lanka were the most privileged minority in the world was not something they could understand.

It is known that the West threw their support behind the Opposition candidate. According to political commentators interested parties in the US are said to have “invested” US$140m in his campaign.

Australian Liberal party’s Deputy Federal Director, James McGrath “has been quietly working on the Sri Lankan opposition coalition’s campaign since December, conducting focus polls and conceiving the 10-point pledge that has helped catapult the country’s former army chief into a winnable position.”(The Australian, January 27, 2010).

“Chauvinist” vote

The LTTE activists overseas were fully behind the Opposition candidate - who had agreed to all the demands made by the TNA. It is, therefore, natural that this overwhelming support shown for the person who stood up to the West should be taken for a “Chauvinist” vote.

Many of these reports talk about Sri Lanka having moved away from its “traditional western allies”. These analysts forget that Sri Lanka was a founder member of the Non-Aligned movement, therefore, Sri Lanka maintained cordial relations with all countries, while Sri Lanka has had historical ties with China that go further back than the relatively recent connections with the Western countries.

The people voted for Mahinda Rajapaksa because he put the Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and unitary status ahead of all other concerns. It was his leadership that paved the way for the elimination of terrorism and freedom of the Tamil people to vote whichever way they wanted. Freedom for all Sri Lankans to live without the fear of terrorism each day.