Nalin de Silva

Navi Pillai will be replaced by a Jordanian Prince by the name Zeid al Hussein who is supposed to be tougher than the former. What is meant by being tougher is that al Hussein who had been the Jordanian ambassador in US will be more of a hard liner, taking the line not from Jordan but from US itself. He would not be tough to US, but would be tougher to countries that do not follow the American line in general.

In the meantime Pillai not satisfied with what she had done to make things difficult for Sri Lanka, has apparently appointed a committee with Ms. Sandra Beidas to investigate comprehensively what has happened during the humanitarian operations. It is not known what is meant by comprehensively. Does it mean that she wants an investigation of the terrorist activities of the LTTE. After all governments and armed forces are there to protect the citizens from such terrorist activities and there is nothing to investigate of the operations carried out by the armed forces in defeating the terrorists.

It is not known whether Pillai has instructed the team of comprehensive investigators to inquire into the deaths of Alfred Duraiappa and others, and also the most inhuman act of using more than three hundred innocent civilians as a human shield, by the humane terrorist Prabhakaran. It was a Bishop of the Church of Sri Lanka who said that Prabhakaran was a humane person! If during the cross fire any member of the human shield had died the armed forces are not responsible for such deaths as if these people were not used as a human shield by Prabhakaran no civilian deaths would have occurred.

 Terrorist leaders

Zeid al Hussein

The very purpose of using people as a human shield was to kill them so that the terrorist leaders could survive. The LTTE is responsible for all the deaths of the members of the human shield whether they were killed by the armed forces or the LTTE. It may be that the LTTE killed some of the civilians in order to blame the armed forces. After all, the human shield was protecting the terrorist leaders, having being placed closer to the terrorist camps. It was easy for the LTTE to kill the members of the human shield and the probability of the latter being killed by the former is great.

Sri Lanka has so far acted in good faith and allowed various commissions, teams and individuals to “come and see” in the words of the President Mahinda Rajapaksa. They were allowed to write and present reports of the “situation” at various fora including the UNHRC. However, it was clear that the so called reports had been written prior to the arrival of the team or the individual, and that they were bogus reports. Nobody could blame the Sri Lankan government for not giving the freedom for the so called investigators to travel to any place they wanted. The “investigators” were free to travel anywhere and to meet anybody they wanted, a fact that they themselves cannot deny. Of course the “investigators” did not want to meet the Sinhala nationalists in order to find out the “other side” of the story.

This nonsense of “investigations” has to be stopped sometime and this is the best time to do it. Navi Pillai is retiring making way for a tougher person, and we do not have to consult an “Anjanama” or an oracle to find out what the tough guy has in store for us. No more so called investigators should be allowed to step into the country, as it is not a difficult task for any knowledgeable person to predict the report even before the “investigators” apply for their visas for a de facto holiday in Sri Lanka, to visit places such as Jaffna, Killinochchi, Mulathive, Batticaloa.

Bogus investigators

Now who has the power to decide whether these bogus investigators should be allowed to visit Sri Lanka? It is none other than the citizens of the country, which even if the tough guy does not know is a sovereign state. The best method that the government would have adopted was to have a referendum on the matter. It is not a difficult task to formulate a question on this matter to be put to the people for a yes/no answer. Once the people decide at a referendum no tough guy in the world could go against it unless he is so tough that he is not concerned of the sovereignty of the country. The tough guy would learn a lesson if he has no respect for the sovereignty of the country.

However, it appears that the government has decided on the second best probably considering the fact we are into the “election season” and the commissioner of elections would need a bigger vote to conduct a referendum as well. However, I would have preferred a referendum irrespective of the cost as the government could have taken the opportunity to educate the people on sovereignty, tough guys, Western Christian colonialism and create an awareness among the people and allow them to participate actively and consciously to defend the sovereignty of the country.

It appears that the government intends to allow the representatives of the people to decide on the issue of allowing the “investigators” to come to Sri Lanka.

Alfred Duraiappa

Now who would want the so called investigators to come to Sri Lanka? Whoever opposes a motion not allow the “investigators” to come to the country is engaged in parochial politics and not national politics. They consider this not as a national issue but as an opportunity to sling mud at the government. It is unfortunate that some political parties are not concerned at all of the country, if they think that they have an opportunity to topple the government. The “investigators” are after not only the President and the Secretary of Defence, but the armed forces of the country in general.

It is known that the TNA that represents the dispersed Tamils in the West, and consisting of the Anandi and Sumanthiran factions, is fond of investigators whether they come with the blessings of Navi Pillai or the tough guy. In fact the TNA that is not involved in the welfare even of the people in the Northern Province would be happy if the tough guy can be tougher.

Ceasefire agreement

The TNA is conspiring against the state as we have already mentioned and they have MoUs written or unwritten, with Jayalalithaa and some others in India. The fact that they are silent whenever the issue of the Jaffna fishermen is raised clearly demonstrates that for them Chennai is more important than Jaffna.

Apparently Sumanthiran has said that the thirteenth amendment is not an appendix of the constitution. It is not an appendix, but only a footnote imposed on us by the might of India. If the TNA was genuinely interested in maintaining the sovereignty of the country they should help the government to drop the footnote.

The UNP on the other hand is responsible for the thirteenth amendment and the ceasefire agreement between Ranil Wickremesinghe and Prabhakaran, (remember that Ranil was only the Prime Minister of the country and not the President and he had no authority to sign a ceasefire agreement) and is against the Sinhala people in general.

The UNP ridiculed the armed forces during the humanitarian operations and quite clearly hoped that the Sri Lanka forces would not be able to defeat the terrorists. Now they want to undermine the victory of the armed forces and sling mud at the forces. The UNP is an anti national party (ANP) or Unwilling National Party and the national top that some leaders wear cannot hide the anti national character of the party. They talk of accountability of the armed forces after opposing the humanitarian operations is a joke, and they have no right to talk of accountabilities.

The armed forces and the government are accountable only to the people and at the elections that have been held over the years, the people have approved the “accounts” as far as the operations are concerned. It is the biggest joke to hear Ranil speaking on accountability of the armed forces after opposing and ridiculing them, talking of free education after bringing the white paper when he was the minister of education and talking of pensions of the public sector employees after reducing the number of positions in that sector by hundred thousands. Let the UNP oppose the resolution not to allow the “investigators” to come to Sri Lanka, in the Parliament and face the consequences at the elections.Top of Form