Ranjit Rupesinghe Brisbane, Australia.

The Editor
TIME Magazine

Dear Sir

In your most recent edition you have chosen 100 persons as the world’s most influential. With all its inevitabilities most of them were from the western world. Be that as it may, included in your list is Gen. Ashfaq Kayani of Pakistan and a couple of other military men. Now whilst I have nothing against the general I find it baffling, and indeed a glaring omission, that you could have gone past two individuals who have created history in succesfully defeating the most feared and evil terrorist group in the world viz the LTTE terrorists. Sri Lanka’s defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse and the country’s Army Commander Lt. General Sarath Fonseka, despite the odds being stacked against them have, with brilliant military strategy brought the most ruthless terrorist movement to their knees with only “mopping up” to be carried out in a small sliver of space in the north/east of that beautiful land. How they could not have made your “list” beats me.

Tiny Sri Lanka has been crying out for help to combat the scourge of terrorism for the past 25 years but all they got were pious pronouncements and moralising from the west, who kept exhorting successive governments in that country to “negotiate”, something which they wouldn’t do themselves with their adversaries. It was therefore, left to the present president Mahinda Rajapakse to stop any further bleeding of his country telling his countrymen and indeed the whole world that “enough is enough”. And then came along these two intrepid soldiers mentioned above who have virtually written a manual on how to combat terrorism. The whole world owes Gotabaya Rajapakse and Gen Sarath Fonseka a debt of gratitude. For their magnificient contribution to society in general, nothing but universal recognition should be bestowed on them. As a long standing contributor to Time, I am disappointed that these two brave individuals couldn’t make your list. I hope very much that you will have the space in one of your future editions to pay tribute to these two outstanding men.

Yours sincerely

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Ranjit Rupesinghe (Mr)
Brisbane, Australia

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