Opportunity for the UNP

The latest shenanigans by International Crisis Group to place Sri Lanka on the dock should be viewed by every patriotic, peace loving citizen of this country as an attempt to prevent normality returning to Sri Lanka. It appears as if the job of the International Crisis Group is to keep the world in perpetual crisis and hence when crisis troubled lands come to an end the ICG goes to explore ways and means of continuing the crisis

If the whole point in the proposed ICG exercise is to stop killing of innocent civilians in Sri Lanka, the ICG can be relieved now since the killings took place during the conflict which is now over.

During the conflict, the lines of accountability could not be established clearly and the parties to the conflict killed often in self defence.

But now that that horrific chapter is over, the Army has withdrawn from civilian areas, emergency has been relaxed, accountability for human rights violations have been established and there is law and order in all parts of the country.

All this was accomplished by the present Government and the Government brought that killing spree to an end.

Then why is the ICG nit picking with Government in power? Is it not pleased with the Government for ending that killing spree in Sri Lanka? This is the only Government that held its own against the Tiger menace that killed nearly 100,000 people in Sri Lanka during the past 34 years.

All previous Governments gave into Tiger antics and buckled under pressure and hence the country could not see an end to the conflict. Civilian killings took place during the entirety of this drawn out conflict under every regime starting from JR Jayewardene.

The most number of civilian deaths were reported during Chandrika Bandaranaike’s time. But then, why is the ICG targeting ‘war crimes’ only against the present regime?

The ICG wants to prosecute only the leaders of the present regime for ‘war crimes’ and not the past regimes.

This is because there is a difference between the present regime and the previous ones. The present regime established peace whereas the previous ones, for all their turmoil, could not do so.

Hence the ICG does not seem to like a stable Government that can maintain peace in Sri Lanka. It wishes to put the men in the present regime in the dock so that the country will slip back to anarchy again!

There is yet another problem the ICG is faced with in the international arena.

Now after the Sri Lankan experience all States facing with terrorism have adopted a tough stance against terrorism in their respective countries. Such an attitude probably will help some Governments crush terrorism and establish more stable Governments in those countries.

This is the biggest worry the ICG is facing at the moment and hence they should do everything to ensure that other poor countries besotted by terrorism will not take Sri Lanka as an example!

Thus this agenda of the ICG should now be clear to the people in Sri Lanka, at least to those who are not blinded by fanatic party loyalties. Who is the citizen in this country who can subscribe to an international mechanism that seeks to prosecute war heroes of this country who ended the 34 year misery?

The UNP however has been following a quaint policy with regard to the international forces that have attempted to destabilize Sri Lanka over the past few years. The moronic leadership of the present UNP in its myopic chicanery has opposed the State of Sri Lanka more than the Government policies.

As a result the UNP has become an anti-national party. Today the party vote base is down to 29 percent and even that 29 percent is due to the party loyalists who believe that the UNP still has policies of DS and Dudley. But the present UNP still thinks it is more acceptable to the ‘international community’ and hence it should follow that ‘international line’ and continue to be anti-national.

However, the UNP should remember that Sri Lanka is a democracy and people in this country have rejected this anti-national line of the UNP quite consistently. The ordinary people have already realized the insidious ways and dubious agendas of this so-called ‘international community’ even though the present UNP is yet to.

But yet it is better late than never for the UNP and if it wishes to remain in national politics it may now have to change this ‘anti-national’ and ‘international’ policy sooner rather than later. For this the UNP can make use of the present crisis situation spawned by the ICG with its proposal to investigate.

The UNP leadership, if it can make an honest appraisal of the events in Sri Lanka should know that this whole attempt by the ICG is a ‘joke gone too far’. If there was an international inquiry into the UNP crimes during 88/89 era, the present UNP Leader would have been one of the first to be docked.

The UNP should therefore pronounce its position on this proposed ICG attempt to discredit Sri Lanka with a patriotic stand, eschewing political chicanery and ‘anti nationalism’.

The question however is does the present UNP has the courage to take such a stand disregarding the patronization it receives, fiduciary and other, from the international forces that seek to destabilize Sri Lanka?

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