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
6th 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 7th
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.
Fortunately that dark period of Sri Lanka ushered
in by Ranil Wickramasinghe as Prime Minister on
9th 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 8th 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 ?
