Indecision of Indian PM on attending CHOGM
Posted on October 23rd, 2013
Asada M Erpini
A number of reports have appeared in the Sri Lankan as well as in the Indian media that the Prime Minister of -Ëœmighty-â„¢ India is not yet decided whether or not he should attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in November in Sri Lanka, apparently because of the unfair treatment that the Tamils of Sri Lanka receive today. The gentleman is reportedly taking all factors into consideration before he arrives at a decision.
The average Sri Lankan is not a fool. All factors that the Indian PM talks about are merely the support of the Tamil Nadu politicians that he needs to prop up his government. The anti-Sri Lanka noises that the aged film stars and the film script writers in Tamil Nadu make and the desire to be in the good books of the puppeteer lady from Italy are the only reasons that make the Indian PM adopt the current stand.
There is more than ample evidence, emanating especially from those who were in the know in India itself that the armed forces of India, with the open support of Indian Prime Ministers connected to the top rung in the Congress Party, trained, financed and unleashed the most ruthless terrorists of the world on an innocent Sri Lanka.
India has twenty eight states and seven territories comprising the present day union. Tamil Nadu is just one of these, with a population of nearly 74 million. The total population of India is over 1.2 billion, and the Chief Ministers or the people in any of these states or territories are worried about Sri Lanka-â„¢s Tamils, or for that matter, Sri Lanka: they have their own problems to deal with.
It is a pity that the Indian PM, through his actions and pronouncements, shows that Tamil Nadu is India. Allowing a racist group of Tamils in Tamil Nadu to hold educated man of his calibre to ransom is beyond belief.
Mr. Indian Prime Minister, please leave Sri Lanka and its Tamils alone. The latter are Sri Lankan citizens, and the President of Sri Lanka will look after them. If you are not happy about the treatment that Sri Lanka Tamils receive, the solution is obvious: get the whole lot to settle down in Tamil Nadu, and both India and Sri Lanka can live in peace.
October 23rd, 2013 at 12:30 pm
OMG !!! I HAVE NEVER SEEN A MAN SO HEN-PECKED AS MAN MOHAN SINGHEEE.
So all these years and months Singhee did not know what was happening in Sri Lanka. He cannot decide. All this is Indian BS.
He has a great feeling, TO BE OR NOT TO BE. It is good for Sri Lanka, not to have Prime Ministers who armed Terrorists to KILL innocent people of Sri Lanka. He might have to answer questions over here. That gives him goose flesh.
October 23rd, 2013 at 7:37 pm
OMG !!! I HAVE NEVER SEEN A MAN SO HEN-PECKED AS MAN MOHAN SINGHEEE.
Susantha, you are right.
The other hen that perhaps escaped your mind is the Maha Ranee of Sri Lanka.
Whether the Man Moron Sing-Song comes for the motley commonwealth boozing party or not, our Maha Ranee will always hold him tight and lovingly sing into his ears the heart-rending words of Whitney Houston:
“WHAT EVER YOU MAY DO, I’LL NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER LOVE ANYONE BUT YOU”
Mario Perera
Kadawata
October 23rd, 2013 at 8:58 pm
“WHAT EVER YOU MAY DO, I’LL NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER LOVE ANYONE BUT YOU”
MR singing to Man Moron.
How true!!
This is MR’s anthem.
JR also bent backwards to please Endia but that happened after the Endian air force, Endian navy and Endian army invaded SL.
Without any Endian invasion MR is on all fours!!
MR’s new name is MAHINDIA
IF he comes to the CHOGM, it will be Man Moron’s LAST foreign visit.
MODI is most likely to be the next Endian PM. Another useless loser.
October 24th, 2013 at 3:11 am
Wait until his talk at the CHUGIAM.
Who knows , he might surprise us by attacking British on Vellassa genocide.
Ranee might become Rajaa again …… or at least 1/2 way.
His real name is Mahendra anyway, which is Indian.
October 24th, 2013 at 5:24 am
Emperor will decide, who else. He is in China at the moment.
I don’t think he would want to sit with his subjects, the low caste, Kaffirs and white trash.
The greatest Indian colonial parasite and the first Emperor of India refused to sit with low caste, travel in the same carriage with Kaffirs and treated Afrikaners with contempt.
October 24th, 2013 at 11:17 am
Mr. Asada S. Erpini…….You took the very words out of my mouth.. THIS IS WHAT INDIA should do. Take all the Tamils, including plantation workers & SHUT THE DOOR FOR INDIA.
Its time Sri Lankans take action if our leaders are too pussy footing & scared of India. A country full of filth & poverty trying to DIVERT attention to other places JUST to AVOID taking action to provide decent living conditions to their MASSIVE population which increase like rabbits. our people have realized this over popultaion & abide by having TWO children per family, voluntarily. In China it is ONE child per family. India will overtake Chnina in few years time according to newspaper reports.
IS THIS what ndia want Sri Lanka to do..FIRST GET permisiion from NPC & EPC before embaring on development projects in Sri Lanka? I am sure OUR PRESIDENT does not have to follow INDIA in this respect. He is powerful enough to get both NORTH & EAST to abide by Lankan laws.
No state or Province should have the RIGHT to speak on behalf of the Central Govt. in Sri Lanka. IT IS INDIA, every tom, dick & harry have to make a statement as if it is their RIGHT. Mind your own problems, Sri Lanka can manage on her own…..J
October 24th, 2013 at 8:38 pm
jayasiri : Good point jayasiri ! What a nice place this world would be if all humanity is made to return to their respective places of origin. The Tamils can return to Tamil Nadu. The Singhalese can return to Orissa ( according to Prasad Kariyawasam ) . The American Blacks can return to Africa . The Australians can go back to where they came from, leaving the land for the Aborigines. The Chinese in Singapore & Malaysia can return to China. The list is endless ………………… . You also refer to a country “full of filth & poverty” . If you were living in Singapore or Malaysia and making these comments ………. I would agree ! But from where you come from …………. don’t you feel this is taking things a bit tooooooooooooooooo far jayasiri ??
October 26th, 2013 at 7:22 pm
GREAT! Let us kick India out of the Sampur Power Plant project and give it to the Japanese!
Japan has always stood by Sri Lanka, and Japanese build high Quality Power Generation Equipment.
……………………….
Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation to assist power generation in Sri Lanka
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Oct 26, Colombo: A Japanese diversified conglomerate has expressed willingness to assist the development of Sri Lanka’s power sector, the Economic Development Ministry said.
Japan’s Tokyo based Sumitomo Corporation, a leading integrated trading company engaged in diverse businesses based on its global network, has offered to contribute to the power development in Sri Lanka.
During a meeting between a delegation of the firm and Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa held at the Ministry premises in Colombo on October 24, Sumitomo has announced that it is ready to invest in power generation and distribution, provide technical and engineering expertise and the necessary financial support.
Senior General Manager of Sumitomo Corporation India (Pvt) Ltd. Yusuhiko Siromawa has assured Minister Rajapaksathat Sumitomo is planning to assist in the first, second and third phases of the coal power plant project now under construction in Trincomalee.
The Sumitomo Corporation has also expressed its intention to build a anothe thermal power plant with Japanese aid.
October 27th, 2013 at 10:52 am
Poor President … ALL BLAME & NO CREDIT,, except from Sri Lankans who love him well; Not even for risking his political neck by Empowering the TNA Separatists in the Northern Province through PC Elections.
I FERVENTLY hope the President will DOMINATE the TOUGH TALK at the CHOGM meeting!
Dear Mr. resident … Please TELL THEM what you are GOING to TELL THEM, then TELL THEM, and TELL THEM WHAT YOU JUST TOLD THEM for good measure until the message rings between their ears!
These Drone Killers Preaching Peace & Harmony to Sri Lanka and the Developing World, are Quick to Sponsor Conflict and Terror in Other Countries to Undermine Governments and Exploit their Resources, but they Never Follow Their Own Advice!
Don’t let these jaundiced HYPOCRITES wielding DOUBLE STANDARDS get a word in EDGEWAYS!
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Rajapaksa: Sri Lanka’s affable authoritarian?
By Jason Burke
The Observer
Japantimes.co,jp
Oct 27, 2013
LONDON – Down in the deep south of Sri Lanka, where life usually moves at a leisurely pace, there is one small town that is less tranquil. Hambantota — population 20,000 — is expanding fast. There is a vast new deepwater port, built with $360 million of borrowed Chinese cash; a new 35,000-seat cricket stadium; a huge convention center; and a $200 million international airport. A broad-gauge railway is under construction. Powerful people have ambitions for Hambantota. None is more powerful or more ambitious than President Mahinda Rajapaksa, born nearby in 1945.
There is much construction in Sri Lanka these days. The island nation was already one of the wealthiest in South Asia but its economy had been held back by decades of civil conflict. Now the war is over and growth rates, the government claims, are touching 7 percent.
Earlier this month, a new section of motorway was opened. Undeniably one of the best roads in a part of the world where rutted single-lane highways still link many major cities, it joins the international airport with Colombo, the political and commercial capital. British Prime Minister David Cameron, 51 other leaders and Prince Charles will drive down its tarmac next month when they fly in for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.
The summit is controversial. Rajapaksa, now in his eighth year of power, is much reviled — at least in the West. The chief charges against him are serious: that he ignored, condoned or even encouraged war crimes committed by Sri Lankan troops in the final bloody phases of the campaign to crush the brutal Tamil Tigers rebels; that he has again ignored, condoned or possibly even ordered a wave of repression directed at those who contest his or his government’s authority; that he has made no serious effort to reach out politically to Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority; that he aims to ensure that his family’s grip on the island nation is without challenge for decades to come.
In short, it is alleged that under his rule Sri Lanka is becoming a nasty, authoritarian quasi-rogue banana republic. If there is some truth in many of the charges, the reality, like the man, is more complex than appearances suggest. In person, Rajapaksa is more avuncular than ogre. Tall, heavy-set, with an astonishing bouffant as solid, glossy and black as polished coal, he exudes the hearty bonhomie of the rugby player he once was. He remembers names, slaps backs, happily strips to the waist when he visits temples, and makes sure his guests, even journalists who have come to grill him, have been offered a cup of tea. One reporter watched astonished as the president went off to fetch biscuits. Such gestures reveal a canny politician with a carefully cultivated folksy style.
Almost all Sri Lanka’s post-independence leaders have been smooth, English-speaking, often educated abroad, and from Colombo or its environs. Rajapaksa, a small-town lawyer without a university degree, is thus very different, even if he does come from a political family. Rarely seen in Western dress and never in a suit, he is supposed to enjoy a traditional country breakfast of buffalo milk curd and cane sugar treacle. His trademark rust-brown neck scarf deliberately recalls the sweaty rags of farmers and is supposed to represent the millet they sow. He usually speaks Sinhala in public — though he can get by in English, albeit without the fluency of many South Asian senior politicians, and has learned some Tamil.
One problem for his critics is that, though elections are marred by intimidation, violence and the misuse of state resources, few deny that Rajapaksa’s successive poll victories reflect a genuine mandate. Even his opponents in Colombo admit that he remains without a serious local political challenger. His heartland is rural, conservative, Buddhist and dominated by the Sinhalese majority.
It was these voters that, as a 24-year-old novice politician armed with a law degree and a famous father, he won over to enter parliament for the first time in 1970. The same voters backed him in 2005 when, after a year as prime minister, he stood for president, and still back him now. Part of the dislike, and the fear, that Rajapaksa inspires in Colombo’s political elite is his unashamed exploitation of his status as a political outsider.
The emotions Rajapaksa inspires in many Tamils, who comprise 10 percent to 15 percent of the population, have their source elsewhere, however. A key election pledge was to end the bitter war against the Tamil Tigers, the de facto government in much of the north, by negotiation. This stance shifted. Here his brother, Gotabhaya, the defense secretary, played a key role, as he would do in the campaign to come. During the 26 years of conflict there had been a number of truces, most recently in 2002. These, the Rajapaksa brothers and the senior military believed, were simply used by the Tamil Tigers to resupply and reorganize. This time the Rajapaksas decided there would be no truce, whatever the international pressure.
The military was expanded hugely. The cease-fire collapsed entirely. One senior Sri Lankan official remembered how, when a report of heavy army casualties arrived on the president’s desk, Rajapaksa called Sarath Fonseka, a junior general with a ruthless reputation who had been picked to command the new campaign, to express his concern. Fonseka said that if the president wasn’t prepared to have men killed, he would resign. He stayed.
Only during the last few weeks of the conflict did the world begin to take notice of events in the rough, scrubby plains of northern Sri Lanka. As they retreated, the Tamil Tigers took hundreds of thousands of civilians with them. In a series of interviews last month, noncombatants spoke of chaos, “no-fire zones” that were not respected by the army, and orders from the Tamil Tigers to leave their homes. What is also clear is that the Tigers made little effort to separate combatants from civilians, particularly toward the end of the fighting, when huge numbers, including fighters and the Tamil Tiger high command, were packed into a tiny area between a lagoon and the sea. They may have shot some people who tried to escape.
But the army bombed, shelled and strafed the area indiscriminately, killing the Tigers’ leaders but also thousands of civilians.
“For many days we did not leave our bunker. It was just shells all the time,” one refugee from the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu recalled last month. “Finally we decided we would die unless we ran. So we waited until a break. . . . The army was only a few hundred meters away but on the way we passed maybe 25 or 30 bodies, men, women, old people, children.”
There are also reports, backed by images shot on soldiers’ phones, of large numbers of summary executions of captured rebel cadres and some civilians. These are the alleged war crimes that the United Nations wants credibly and independently investigated — something the Sri Lankan government has so far failed to do. Rajapaksa has called the allegations “propaganda” and accused the U.N. of doing the bidding of “big countries” who “bully” little ones.
Such rhetoric plays well at home, particularly from a man whose career has been built on an image of the straight-talker from the backwoods, and can be useful globally too. No one in Rajapaksa’s neighborhood is very keen on lectures from the west either. “We can live with it, but the public finger-wagging doesn’t help anyone,” said one senior Sri Lankan diplomat.
Since the end of the war other concerns have intensified. There have been scores, some say hundreds, of abductions. Journalists are systematically threatened. Trade unionists and human rights activists receive regular “warnings” or are roughed up. The constitution has been changed to allow Rajapaksa a third term. Dozens of his relatives hold government posts, controlling, according to one estimate, nearly half the state expenditure. A son is being groomed as a successor. There are widespread allegations of graft and an upsurge in sectarian violence.
“It is a situation of total state capture,” said J.C. Weliamuna, a leading human rights lawyer in Colombo.
This is South Asia, of course, where zero-sum politics, dynasties, massive development in the native towns of incumbent leaders, marginalized minorities and corruption is unexceptional. Tourist visits and revenues are up — though not by as much as the government would like, or, probably, claims. Foreign investment worth $2 billion is expected this year, officials say. But even regionally there are now worries about where Sri Lanka is headed.
These concerns will all be carefully obscured next month. So far the only invited leader not attending the Commonwealth summit is Canada’s Stephen Harper. David Cameron says “tough messages” are best delivered in person. Rajapaksa will no doubt be his usual bluff and cheery self at the meeting. But if anyone is delivering a tough message, it will be him.