Felicitation Ceremony in Parliament for Ranil Wickramasinghe-for doing what ?

A felicitation Ceremony in the house of Parliament should be for a politician who had given lifetime of his  service  for the welfare of the people and the protection of the country.

In the case of the recently held felicitation ceremony to Ranil Wickramasinghe for his 40 years in politics, if there was a necessity for such a Ceremony it should have been more appropriate to have organised it amoung friends in the Nelum Pokuna, rather than in the house of Parliament.

If there was to have been a felicitation ceremony in the Parliament  it should have been in May,2009, to honour President Mahinda Rajapakse who ended a 30 years of suffering of the people, saved the country from being divided, and held back the Tamil separatist tendencies.

But instead that great man President Mahinda Rajapakse is being vilified, scandalised and treated as a thief, while  a man who was an egoist working for his own self aggrandisement,  selling the country, signing agreements with the terrorists allowing the country to be divided, forcing the Armed Forces to remain in barracks while allowing the terrorists freedom to go about where ever they want and kill, gun down, massacre, assassinate, snipe, and blast people to smithereens, is felicitated in the well of the Parliament for 40 years of scandal ridden life with a political non existence.

Well, Ranil Wickramasinghe had been in politics for 40 years but what has he contributed to the development of the country, welfare of the people and make Sri Lanka an independent sovereign states without its sovereignty interfered by the west who wants to divide the country separate the communities , and make Sri Lanka a poor developing country dependent on the West, and the country divided amoung the Tamils, the Muslims and the Sinhala.

Ranil Wickramasinghe won  the Parliamentary elections in 1977 to become a UNP Member of Parliament. With the assassination of Gamini Dissanayake under mysterious circumstances in 1994 Ranil W became the leader of the UNP. Sri Lanka after Independence was ruled  under constitutions written by the English and followed a Western capitalist system of government.

It changed only after 1956 when SWRD Bandaranayake was elected into parliament as a member of his newly founded Sri Lanka Freedom Party, and became  the Prime Miister of Si Lanka. Thereafter  Sri Lanka was being taken on a semi socialist system of government, departing from its capitalist beginnings. It was under this  Socialist system of governance that Sri Lanka found its national pride, with the renaissance of a  surging Sinhala Buddhist culture.

Sri Lanka changed governments oft and on and every time there was a UNP Government Sri Lanka went many steps backward in development and in  its socio cultural awakening.

The UNP political system that follows a half baked  Western Capitalism is not suitable to a developing country like Sri Lanka with its Buddhist cultural back ground which is its riches the cradle in which not only the Sinhala Community has been enriched , but also where  the other Communities too  have been greatly influenced.

Ranil Wickramasinghe’s political carrier is worth being examined to find out whether it is worthy of a Felicitation Ceremony in the house of Parliament. Ranil Wickramasinghe  has been credited for  radical changes in the education system of the country in 1980, and for  an exceptional economic development and industrial promotion in rural areas and  making  his Biyagama electorate a model of suburban development with the Biyagama Free Industrial Zone as his creation to provide employment to youth. Later on during his second period from 9 December,2001 to 6^th April, 2004 he is credited with improving the ailing economy and for bringing  the terrorist to a negotiating table for peace talk.

But all had not been well under Ranil Wickramasinghe in his capacity of a Minister or a Prime Minister.  May be he had good intentions but he did not know how well to organise his political system for the welfare of the people and the development of the country. He was idealistically attached to Western capitalist system and would not deviate from that as he valued his inborn servility to Western culture.

His idea of a negotiated settlement of terrorism prompted by the west was  a tragedy. He trusted in the Western Governments and  failed to understand that Western Governments are a set of hypocrites working for their own benefit. Ranil Wickramasinghe believed in West as a safety net which could be brought in to help if Sri Lanka faced political or internal communal problems.

Eric Solheim the Norvegian negotiator and Robert O Blake the American Ambassador both who were  more or less “undercover agents” of Prabhakaran the terrorist leader of Sri Lanka, discouraged a military solution against terrorism in Sri Lanka and insisted on a negotiated settlement. Ranil Wickramasinghe blindly walked into the trap and signed the CFA with the Terrorist Prabhakaran.

It was the same mistake that J.R.jayawardhane had made before him. When Indian Air Force trespassed  itself into Sri Lanka airspace to defend the terrorists and forced  JR to enter into an agreement, JR may have expected America of which he was a great friend and admirer, to intervene. But he found himself isolated and had to give into the demands of India. Ranil Wickramasinghe never took a lesson from the deception of his uncle  the President J.R.Jayawardhane. He continues his blind allegiance to the West and India.

The Agreement –the CFA,  he entered into with the terrorists was a disaster. Under the agreement the terrorists were given control over areas they occupied allowing them to come into areas out side their controlled areas for political activities, but the Sri Lanka Police or the Armed Forces were not allowed into the terrorist controlled areas. It was sheer suicide.

Ranil Wickramasinghe restricted Armed Forces to remain in military barracks, and made the Armed Forces  helpless when from time to time the terrorist came out and placed bombs, sent suicide bombers, and committed atrocities against the civilians in Sinhala villages, and escaped into terrorists controlled areas. Any police officer going into these areas in search of wrong doers were arrested by the terrorists, tortured and killed.

Was this  the contribution of  Ranil Wickramasinghe to the Independent Sri Lanka that had to be celebrated with a Felicitation Ceremony in the House of Parliament ?

Under Ranil Wickramasinghe’s CFA the whole of North and East were controlled by the terrorists. Many meetings-six in all  he arranged between the representatives of the  terrorists, and the representatives of the Government of Sri Lanka for a negotiated settlement ended in failure, with the representatives of the terrorists walking away from negotiations.

Ranil’s CFA opened the whole of Sri Lanka for the terrorists to carry out, at their pleasure, multifarious murders, massacres, bomb blasts which resulted in the death of thousands of innocent civilians, and the personnel of the Armed Force, and the Police.

Fortunately this doomed period of Sri Lankan history under the Premiership of Ranil Wickramasinghe ended in 7^th February, 2004. The worst of Ranil Wickramasinghe’s contribution to Sri Lanka was what he perpetrated during the period1988 to 1990, which was the darkest period of  Sri Lankan history, after the rein of the tyrant Kalingha Magha who destroyed Buddhist monasteries and dispersed the Sinhala people from their lands.

During this dark period of  the history of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickramasinghe had organised an illegal detention Camp in Batalanda, where thousands of Sinhala youth were detained tortured and killed and those who disappeared in that period have not been traced.

In 1997 the President Chandrika Kumaratunga  appointed a Special Presidental Commission of Inquiry Act,  to investigate the activities of Batalanda.  One of the findings of the Commission  which recommended  to “ bring the guilty to book was  that, “  (Ranil) Wickramasinghe and the SSP Nalin Delgoda are indirectly responsible  for the maintenance  of places of unlawful detention and torture chambers in houses of the Batalanda Housing Scheme, and unauthorised meetings  of police officers involved in counter insurgency  operations  in the housing complex and that as such he has abused his authority.”

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalanda_detention_centre)

It is also worth noting that the President Maithripala Sirisena, in August, 2012, when he was the Minister of Health in the  Government of President Mahinda Rajapakse and the General Secretary of the SLFP while addressing an election committee  meeting held at Siripura, Polonnaruwa had said, “ …that during the 1994 presidential election campaign , all campaign details  concerning the UNP Presidential Candidate Gamini Dissanayake were being secretly passed on to his opponent Chandrika Kumaratunga by Ranil Wickramasinghe and that he has ample proof  to validate his claim and allegation.”

Ranil Wickramasinghe ..Is he a dictator ? 

The Mahanayake Thero of the Asgiriya Chapter the most Venerable Udugama Sri Buddharakkhita thero had once said that since recently the Opposition leader Ranil Wickramasinghe is acting like a Dictator. In 2010, UNP MP Dayasiri Jayasekara said  that within the constitution of the UNP,Ranil Wickramasinghe is not a democratic leader but a Dictator. Then again a Former Minister and a UNP MP Mahinda Wijesekara had accusing  Ranil Wickramasinghe said  that, “….we do not want a Dictator in the Party.”, as Wickramasinghe opposed party reforms.

That is  not all the fantastic work accomplished by the Prime Monister Ranil Wickramasinghe, which probably valued this Felicitation Ceremonies in the House in the context of  the Yahapalanaya Governed Sri Lanka where every thing abnormal are taken as normal by the President and his SLFP break away group, and the Prime Minister and his UNP cohorts.

In December 2001 Ranil Wickramasinghe became the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. In 2002 he signed the disastrous CFA with Prabhakaran the terrorist. But by then the Armed Forces were making plans to carryout successful military operations to weaken and defeat terrorism. The Armed Forces had set up a Covert Operation Unit in Millenium City Housing Scheme held in Athurigiriya,. where they trained army personnel to infiltrate into the terrorist headquarters as spies  to collect information about terrorists and their activities. This was extremely confidential and very few were even aware of the existence of this meeting place of  the Special Unit.

Ranil Wickramasinghe who was more concerned about himself and his safety, after allegation made by Charitha Ratwatte had a special police force to raid the house in question. It resulted in the names of the members of the Covert Operation Unit of the Armed Forces being made public. Most of them were Tamils. 

This allowed the terrorists to track down the members of the Unit and have them assassinated.  The Sunday Times defence columnist Iqbal Athas in February 2004 had revealed  the names of 24 Tamil members of the Special Unit  assassinated by the LTTE, some of them were abducted by the LTTE and subjected to intense torture for days before they were murdered. More than 80 members of the Special Unit was killed by the LTTE.

(http://www.island.lk/2005/04/01/opinion1.html)

Fortunately that dark period of Sri Lanka ushered in by Ranil Wickramasinghe as Prime Minister on  9^th December, 2001 ended in February 2004. After 2005 when Mahinda Rajapakse became the President of Sri Lanka and was taking determined steps to end terrorism  60 UNP MPs left the UNP to join the government of the President Mahinda Rajapakse to help him in his war effort.

Ranil Wickramasinghe as the leader of the Opposition through out  the period of military operations against the terrorists,  ridiculed the Government of the President Mahinda Rajapakse  and the Armed Forces and discouraged soldiers in their heroic effort to eliminate terrorism.

Ranil Wickramasinghe  was responsible for luring away Maithripala Sirisena from the SLFP and from the Government of the President Mahinda Rajapakse to make of him a puppet President, reducing his executive powers and takeover the administrative powers over to himself as the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe since his appointment to the office in 2015 had made his principle object the accusation of the President Mahinda Rajpakse as a thief who had enriched himself taking bribes and stealing state funds,  and accusing his family and all those who had any connection to him for bribery and corruption. To facilitate this principle activity of his government he set up the FCID which takes instructions directly from him.

When Ranil W became the Prime Minister all development projects in Sri Lanka were temporarily stopped, putting thousands of people out of work. And subsequent efforts of development by his government has been made difficult as it had antagonised the  principle investor the Chinese Government, and to get them back to invest in development had necessitated the giving of thousands of acres of land and the Hambantota Harbour to the Chinese investors on long lease- almost an outright sale to China..

Ranil Wickramasinghe’s government has taken Sri Lanka from what it was before 8^th January,2015 and after May,2009,  many years back words with even the likelihood of “terrorism raising its head again”.

He is now working on a Western Agenda which means giving the North and East  of Sri Lanka to the Tamils under a new (Federal) Constitution. Already the North and East have their own National Anthem sung in Tamil. Sampanthan and Wigneswaran would want police powers and powers over Land to the North and East Provincial Council.

Ranil Wickramasinghe betrayed Sri Lanka by appointing Mano Ganeshan as a Minister giving him a very important subject under his Ministry, and appointing Sampanthan the leader of TNA as the leader of the Opposition.

Is it correct that Sampanthan  the Leader of the Opposition in Sri Lanka Parliament Sampanthan meeting a USA Congressman  and invite America to interfere into Sri Lanka’s internal Affairs ?

“The United States has been urged (by TNA Leader Sampanthan), to ensure that Sri Lanka fully implemented the Geneva Resolution 30/1 co-sponsored by Colombo on Oct 1, 2015.

The Geneva resolution has proposed setting up of a hybrid war crimes court including foreign judges among other things.A statement issued by the Office of the Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan quoted the veteran politician as having told a visiting delegation of US Congressmen accompanied by US Ambassador in Colombo Atul Keshap that their government should hold the Sri Lankan Government responsible the commitments they had made to the international community, particularly with regard to the Geneva Resolution.”

(http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=169810)

The people of Sri Lanka are behind their beloved  President Mahinda Rajapakse, except perhaps the Tamils, Muslims and Catholics who voted against President Mahinda Rajapakse to brink Sirisena-Ranil Government into power.

Sri Lanka is facing serious political problems. China had been a country that helped the development of Sri Lanka without any conditions attached, but India has ulterior motives and getting too close to India is a danger to the Sovereignty of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka  should have a strong political leadership in dealing with India and the West. Prime Minister Wickramasinghe with his attachment to West and India is politically weak . The President Maithripala Sirisena is not kept well informed by his Prime Minister of the dangers Sri Lanka runs into in dealing with these two pseudo-friendly powers-West and India.

Under these circumstance, is it not right to question,  for doing what during  40 years in politics,  Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe deserves a  Felicitation Ceremony in the House of Parliament ?