Reconciliation with Tamils Part II-Is it reconciliation or handing over part of Sri Lanka outright to Tamils, and now another part to Muslims ?

Election of  Maithripala Sirisena as President to form a new government does not mean that he was given the right to disinherit Sinhala Buddhists of their country and their culture.

The  government should stop further reconciliation with Tamils. The Tamils are outright Racists if one disagrees, that one should  re-examine his or her mental thinking process. There may however be a few Tamils who are reasonable and understands the reality of the situation correctly.

Even if the dog’s curved tail is put in a tube for many thousand’s of years, it want become straight. So is the separatist mentality of Tamils. To what ever extent the reconciliation efforts were to be made the mental attitude of Tamils will never change, they will always want the “pound of flesh”.

. Wijedasa Rajapakse the Minister of Justice  at a TV debate made a great effort to show how different constitutions gave political rights to minorities. But all those arguments are not valid as Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country before the British colonial rulers wrote those constitutions.

The minorities came later on and they were accepted by the Sinhala people. Migration of minorities  happened in many countries in the world but in those countries the minorities became a part of those countries  and a part of those nations without asking for a part of those country for themselves  or have their language and religion recognised as a part of those countries.  Why should it be otherwise in Sri Lanka ?

Australian government told the Muslims that they were never invited to come, and having come to learn the language of the country and accept the law of the land  or else leave the country.

There seems to be three types of reconciliations going on in Sri Lanka. Firstly the reconciliation efforts of the Yahpalanaya Government, secondly, the  reconciliation demanded by the Tamil Diaspora, Sri Lanka Tamil extremists of the TNA, Sivajilingam and Wigneswaran,  and thirdly, the reconciliation being imposed by the West supported by  the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights  Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.

The Yahapalanaya seems to be giving into all the three types of reconciliations, which would at the end leave little or nothing for the Sinhala Buddhists to call their own.

The reconciliation process allows the Tamils and Muslims to insult, abuse, castigate, and speak disrespectfully of the Buddha, Dhamma and the Sangha the noble triple gem the most sacred heritage of the Buddhists. Venerable Gnanasara thero may speak loud to tell what others think silently, but that does not give the right to anyone or any news paper to address the Venerable Gnanasara thero disrespectfully as Gnanasara.

Before May, 2009, the Tamils of Sri Lanka were being gradually decimated by the  Tamil terrorists, had there not been a President like Mahinda Rajapakse who with the mainly Sinhala Buddhist armed Forces eliminated the terrorists the Tamils of the North and East may have perished or reduced to small numbers.

When speaking of Sri Lanka it has  now to be divided in to two major periods. Sri Lanka before 8^th January,2015,  and Sri Lanka after 8^th January,2015. The Sri Lanka after 8^th January,2015 is a disaster from which it has to be redeemed.

The Government of Sri Lanka before the 8th with its heroic Armed Forces carried out a long and a costly  military operation sacrificing over 6000 men and making many disabled to terminate a more than 30 years long human suffering through terror without any aid from any Western country.

Finally when it was over and relief was brought to  a long suffering people to at last awaken to peace and security and live without  the constant fear of death by terrorist bombs and assassinations,   the USA and the West came forward to accuse the Sri Lanka  Government and its Armed Forces for war crimes.

The people of developing countries seem to have  a false sense of the USA and the West being nations friendly towards the poor people of the underdeveloped countries.

It is an utterly false concept, may be there are some sympathetic towards the poverty stricken people of the developing countries, and there may be organisations and individuals with their “Christian love for the fellow beings” coming forward to contribute material  and spiritual comfort  sharing their more civilised Christianity. But those were ancient concepts of the West,  which have now changed into more sophisticated Human Rights, NGOs, R2P, Amnesty International and so on and so forth.

They Human Rights Watch, NGOs, R2P, Amnesty International and so on and so forth.

- are also giving “ love and affection” to the poor people of these developing countries, by changing their own people friendly elected regimes, to regimes which are West friendly  and dependent on  scrap thrown by the West.

And these poor countries are also blessed  having sympathetic Ambassadors,  like  US Ambassaodor Athul Ketchup, always every where, where he is wanted or where he is not wanted,  interfering into the internal affairs of the countries to divide communities and sow seeds of dissention. According, James Russo, Public Affairs Officer of the U.S Embassy, one of the key goals of the embassy, here in Sri Lanka, is to support the reconciliation process.

Bravo USA Bravo ! Where in the world are foreign embassies engaged in internal affairs of countries to which they have been assigned ?

Now the USA and the Western Countries  do not stand by the Majority Community,  but rather with the minority communities, looking after their, minority interests. Because the Communal dissension is the best means to extract for themselves, the political benefits of strategic importance. Smaller the developing countries become by division through “self determination etc.” they are easy to be manipulated by the West like pawns on a checker board.

Irrational accusations most often used  by the USA and the West against Sri Lanka were due to  the  demands made by  the Tamils living in their respective countries,  who have increased in numbers to be a significant decisive political vote bank.

USA and the West brought a resolution against Sri Lanka for Violation of human rights and war crimes at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva neither for the benefit of the Tamils nor for the Sinhala but for the sake of the political and strategic benefits they can draw for themselves by the implementation of these resolutions which spell disaster to the country.  

The USA and the West cannot on their own divide Sri Lanka (or other developing countries),  destroy its culture, dissolve its identity, and distort its historical past without having a Government (of that country) which listens to them,  and  ready to act without reflexion like the Yahapalanaya Government of Sri Lanka. The USA and the West now have an appropriate government in place in Sri Lanka  to do what they want to do, and at the same time please the Tamil diaspora.

This Yahapalanaya government wants only two  things,  that is firstly  to be in power, and secondly to make people forget the Previous regime of Mahinda Rajapakse which began by raising  Sri Lanka from the status of a developing country to a middle income country, giving people a higher standard of living and above all peace and hope for a better future.

With that interest in view this Yahapalanaya government is more keen in closing the mouths of its opponents, so that the people will have only them- the UNP members of the government to listen,  as the SLFP part of the Yahapalanaya is like a knocked out  boxer lying in the ring.  The Yahaplanaya  has not  done any thing visible as development , primarily because they have neither a plan nor the means.

However the President Maithripala Sirisena shows himself to the people as a good man because he does not hesitate to invite all manifesting associations, strikers and other groups to see him to discuss their problems and find solutions. But, though he listens to them and promises to solve their problems, once they go away satisfied that the President had lent them a sympathetic ear, they realise they have in fact been deceived, the problems had not been solved or what they had got was not what was promised.

 President Sirisena  made such promises to GMOA but they did not get what they requested. The President promised to settle the Bond issue but  the Commission he appointed goes on investigating indefinitely. The thief has been found, but Yahapalanaya government does not want to file legal action against the thief.

The  Yahapalanaya government has not been able to solve any of the major problems of Sri Lanka. They remain like the sword of Damocles.

Reconciliation ! Reconciliation !! to what extent will yahapalanaya go in its reconciliation process….?  Speaking at a ceremony at the Education Ministry  at Isurupaya, Battaramulla the Education State Minister V.Radhakrishnan has vowed  that he would get the government to bring 100 Indian teachers to overcome the prevailing shortage of  science and maths teachers in the Tamil Schools in the estate Sector. Is it part of the ETCA agreement ?

While M.K.Sivajilingam and Wigneswaran call for  seven days of mourning from May 12 to 19^th in remembrance of the genocide of Tamils from the day of Independence 1948, R.Sampanthan the leader of the Yahapalanaya Opposition says  that he has “put in a word” to the Indian Prime Minister  Narendra Modi to ensure the continuation of the  UNP-SLFP Administration, as the TNA has faith in this Yahapalanaya government  with its very favourable reconciliation programme towards Tamils.

In order to make a reality of this favourable situation Sampanthan advices the Yahapalanaya government to maintain unity between SLFP and the UNP factions within the government.  Sampanthan had said that the Indian Government would help the incumbent regime continue its good governance programme. 

But good governance to whom ?

The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit did not assure India’s special  relationship with Sri Lanka. Narendra Modi’s  speech was of questionable intentions towards Sri Lanka. He had more talks with the Tamil political leaders and extended more contact with the Tamil people, ignoring Sinhala people of the South.

India unable to look after its own people some of who live in dire conditions , adviced in his speech at Dickoya that the Sinhala and Tamil Communities  should strengthen unity and harmony as he assured India’s full support  to the steps taken by Colombo to improve the living conditions of  minority Tamils in the country. Do we really need him to come and say that ? India will only aggravate our situation with the Tamils.

It is  a shame that the Yahapalanaya had thought it appropriate to give the Ministry of National Coexistence Dialogue and official Languages to  Mano Ganeshan. Such  a Ministry should have been given to a Sinhala representative of the people in order to have direct contact with the minorities,  otherwise the rift between the minorities and the majority community will be further distanced.

Reconciliation needs two parties and it is not one party giving into every demand of the other, while the other holds onto every thing without  giving anything in return. 

Tamils are not open minded  therefore  they are inept for building unity amoung Communities. The Northern Province Councillor M.K.Sivajilingaam is certainly not helping any reconciliation, he is an unreliable terrorist sympathiser, as much as Wigneswaran the Chief Minister of NPC.  They are both a hindrance to build any unity between the Tamils and the Sinhala people.  They should be arrested or their civic rights should be withdrawn if the Yahapalanaya wants to adopt a successful reconciliation process.

The President Sirisena speaking at a cultural programme Erabadu Vasanbtham at Singakkuliya, Danktuva had said that the spiritual leaders are the real messengers who connect the hearts of the people and strengthen reconciliation as wished by every religious philosophy. 

This is lot of nonsense. Reconciliation is possible only if the Tamils could give up their separatist mental  attitude,  and think of themselves as a people living together in one country with a majority Sinhala Buddhists, and others minority communities. They have to now come together giving up their  separatists identity to identify themselves as partners of a nation living in one country as normal human beings.

Even if the dog’s curved tail is put in a tube for many thousand’s of years, it want become straight. So is the separatist mentality of Tamils, to what ever extent the reconciliation efforts were to be made the mental attitude of Tamils will never change, they will always want the “pound of flesh”.

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Maithripala Sirisena who will never help SLFP form a Government , is helping Ranil's survival until he becomes next President.

It is regrettable to say but the fact which has been made evident is that Maithripala Sirisena has no interest in the welfare of the country or its people. His determination is to out do Mahinda Rajapakse, make Rajapakses labelled thieves and political profiteers and remove the Rajapakse clan from politics. That is his political raison d’etre. The country sees Sirisena  as a mere second in command in the Government, while  Ranil wields  the real power and authority.

Maithripala Sirisena left SLFP without giving any notice to the party, or having resigned before he left it.  That means Maithripala Sirisena  gave up his loyalty to the party  and  refused to stand by its Constitution.  In other words he sacrifice his party for his own personal benefit.

He accepted the Presidency of the SLFP because Mahinda Rajapakse offered it to him, and some self centred individuals like Sarath Amunugama, Rajitha Senaratnen, S.B.Dissanayake, Dilan Perera, Mahinda Samarasinghe etc.,  left the SLFP to support Maithripala Sirisena the new President for self interest, rather than in the interest of the SLFP or to help the country and the people. 

Therefore, Maithripala Sirisena has no genuine interest in the SLFP,  and will not want to form a SLFP Government. He wants to help Ranil Wickramasinghe to stay on as Prime Minister until 2020 allowing him to become the next President, so that Mahinda Rajapakse will not be able to come to politics as  President, Prime Minister or lead the SLFP as its President.

If Sirisena wanted to remove the Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe, he could have done that after the Bond Scam when Ranil refused to dismiss the services of Arjun Mahendran, and appointed him as his own Consultant. The President Sirisena is not seriously concerned about the inquiry into the Bond Scam. The Commission of investigation of the Bond Scam is an eye wash.

The Cabinet reshuffle was  an utter farce appointing Mangala Samaraweera as the Finance Minister and Ravi Karunanayake as the Foreign Minister with the Lotteries Board under his Ministry was a plan set up by Ranil Wickramasinghe. Ravi Karunanayake probably has state secrets about the Bond Scam which could  undermine the people’s trust of both the President and the Prime Minister.

The Yahapalanaya continues to mismanage the Government, without having learnt any thing from their past  errors and mistakes.

The recent floods and landslides left three hundred innocent lives lost. This is not the first time it happened since 2015. This is not the end there may be more in future, should we let even those disasters pass the same way as the last ? When are we going to learn lessons to correct our errors and face others with confidence  at least to reduce the number of deaths ? 

I saw a politician from the government  Mahinda Amaraweera facing a political debate in TV trying  repeatedly to explain  that Sri Lanka being a tropical island surrounded by a sea is naturally prone to such natural disasters, and that the government is helpless. He added that  even the countries more developed than ours too face such disasters.

It is due to this very reason that we are a tropical Island and prone to such disasters that we should be well prepared before they happen,  to face such calamities avoiding danger to the lives of the people.

Can this government of Sirisena –Ranil be exonerated from its culpability of neglect, both in the flood disaster and that of the Meethotamulla garbage dump ? The President was in Australia, the Prime Minister  and the Minister of Disaster Management were outside and did not find it necessary to return immediately to attend to their duty of looking after the people in distress. Since 8^th January,2015 Sri Lanka is falling into decadence and degeneration.

This Sirisena-Ranil Government has not really settled down even after two and a half years to govern the country. The Government is engaged in doing inessentials, without seriously  attending to the matters that concern the welfare of the people and the security of the Country.

Meethotamulla disaster and the present flood disaster have been caused by mismanagement by the government, and its failure to plan ahead to meet unexpected situations that would lead to loss of life and destruction of property.

The Government is still bogged down with its calamitous need to bring the former President, his government and his supporters to court for some thing or another, to satisfy certain sections such as the JVP- JVP which believes that bringing disrepute to  the former President and his supporters would remove him and his supporters from their  popularity amoung the people, which would allow JVP to win back  to themselves the popular  support of those people who held Mahinda Rajapakse in high esteem,  at an election to eventually form a JVP government.

Therefore the JVP is hell bent in forcing  the Yahapalanaya  government to proceed with legal actions against the former President and his supporters on flimsy accusations they have collected and presented to the Bribery Commission and the FCID.

It is time that Sirisena-Ranil Government  stop spending further energy on  discrediting the former President and his supporters,  and begin doing what ever they can to ameliorate the present hopeless situation in which the people find themselves. But all what the Yahapalanaya government is doing is to improve their own “living conditions”, with promises of better living conditions to the people in “ two or three years ” after 2020.

There is bragging and trumpet blowing by the yahapalanaya government while the people are desperate  and  craves  for the end of the yahapalanaya  government. They brag about having set up a unity government of the two main political parties , but every one in the country sees that there is only a UNP  Government and the SLFP is nonexistent.

The President Sirisena who left the SLFP to become the common Presidential Candidate of the Opposition , is more grateful to the UNP and Ranil Wickramasinghe for having made him the President, and he will not hesitate to  betray the SLFP once again to help Ranil Wickramasinghe and the UNP and give into all their  “follies”. This reality has not been understood by the SLFP followers of Sirisena.

How else can one explain why the Cabinet reshuffle saw the President appointing  Ravi Karunanayake as the Foreign Minister  and  assign to him the Lotteries Boards ? That was certainly to please Ranil Wickramasinghe,  as Ranil, Ravi and Arjun Mahendran are  the three musketeers of the Yahapalanaya Government  

Ranil will not give up Arjun Mahendran and the President will not disappointment Ranil on that account, we see how the Commission appointed to investigate the Bond Scam  is becoming a farce  its term of office being extended beyond three months as initially proposed.

The people are now fed up with this government’s inability to provide the people with a satisfactory standard of living. Having failed to attend to the welfare of the people, the government forced by the Western countries continues to cater to the demands of the Tamils for a pseudo reconciliation.

The Muslims too want to have their part of the cake, encouraged by the demands of the Tamils which have been exaggerated, and catered to by the yapalanaya government on the pretext of a  pseudo –reconciliation. The Sinhala Buddhists are not racists but they are unable to keep silent when there is  continued aggressive attitude of the Muslims and their renewed deforestation of Wilpattu reservations to set up Muslim settlements.

The Muslims like Rauf Hakeem, Mujubur Rahman, Marikkar, Asad Salli are rabble rousers. Rauf Kakeem’s motives were clear when  a fire  broke up in a tea factory in Nawalapitiya owned by a Muslim man. Rauf Hakeem without having any evidence accused that the fire was caused by Sinhala extremists, when even  the Muslim owner of the factory denounced the Minister’s claim. 

There is now a hue and cry raised about hate speeches and  the government  announcing that they will take into custody any one found guilty of hate speeches. If it is so Minister Rauf Hakeem should also be arrested and taken into custody.  Sivajilingam, Wigneswaran should be already under arrest. Why should those laws apply to Venerable Gnanasara thero of BBS and not to others ?

When under the previous government after the elimination of terrorism the Armed Forces were trained in building construction, and town planning to allow the Armed Forces that saved the country from terrorism to be the nation builders, the Government was accused by the UNP saying that the Armed Forces are being used to clean drains.

But now Ravi Karunanayake the Minster of Foreign Affairs says that the tri Forces should be used to remove accumulated waste in the city of Colombo.  This is the man who insulted and ridiculed the Armed forces during military operations saying  that the Army is going to Madavachchi and says it is going to Kilinochchi.

Sri Lanka from North to South and East to West is in utter confusion today. There is caste problem in the north, Tamils in the East do not see eye to eye with the Tamils of the North. There is racism, and resentment of the Sinhala Community. There is enmity between the  Tamils and Muslims too .

Despite all this,  the government which is  unable to settle any problems of the country, or bring unity between the Communities despite a pseudo reconciliation process which only  fortifies the separatist Tamils and weakens the Sinhala Buddhists, is swearing to write a new Constitution. If this is allowed it will be another failure like all their failed plans and the final nail on the coffin of Sri Lanka, which the Yahapalanaya government  is preparing to bury while its sad and weak heart is still beating.

It has been recently reported that the UN had said  that  there are 900,000 people facing food insecurity in Sri Lanka and warning that without help the situation might further deteriorate. But Sri Lanka has no means to purchase rice from outside.

What has become to Sri Lanka that was classed as one of the fastest growing economies, before the fateful election of the January, 2015 ?

Roman Emperor Nero was playing his violin while Rome was burning. Sri Lanka is in political flames today and the President Maithripala Sirisena and his Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe are enjoying their lives to the full making foreign visits shaking gloved and un-gloved hands of foreign dignitaries as if there is no problems in Sri Lanka, and as if  its people are living in peace, security, happiness,  and limitless joy!!!

The UNP is still making a hue and cry that  Sri Lanka has no enemies in the world  and all countries of the world are its friends. But no one has turned up yet to save Sri Lanka from falling into the  abyss of decadence and poverty.  But they the “friendly” Nations of the West are waiting  like  the old  Greek widows  covered from  head to foot in black, sitting  around the home where an old  widow is  dying , awaiting her death, to  take away from the home every usable item. That is the sort of friends Sirisena-Ranil Yahapalanaya has made.

The reconciliation efforts of Yahapalanaya has only strengthened the Tamil diaspora which now has found an opening to propose to UN and UNCHR Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al Hussein to force the yahapalanaya Government to allow the Sri Lanka Tamil Community to exercise their right of self determination for self rule. 

This situation has arisen due to the ceaseless action taken by the Yahapalanaya Government in a vein quest for reconciliation with the Tamils. This is also the result of allowing the Yahapalanaya Government to pass the 19^th Amendment.

To stop this disastrous proposal from being taken up by the UN and the UNCHR Zeid Al Ra’ad Zeid Al Hussein,  Sri Lanka should take some radical action immediately.

Sri Lanka should demand why the UN and the UNCHR under Zeid Al Hussein are not taking actions to reprimand  USA and the Western Countries with the NATO Forces for continuing to violate human rights in their incessant bombardments in which hundred and thousands of innocent civilians had perished in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Sri Lanka should demand why only Sri Lanka which got rid of a ruthless terrorism within its own country is being continuously accused for human rights violations and war crimes, while the UN and Zeid Al Hussain are allowing themselves to be used  by the USA and the West to impose demands on Sri Lanka for reconciliation  with the Tamils without leaving that as an interior issue that has to be settled by the Government of Sri Lanka without Foreign intervention?

Sri Lanka should leave  both the UN and the UNHRCouncil forthwith unless they accept a proposal against USA and its allies for war crimes and violation of human rights.