Media Release  Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights in Sri Lanka (SPUR) NSW Inc. Sydney Australia

11 May 2016

A day after the country witnessed an unprecedented turnout and spontaneous worker support at the May Day rally where ex-President Mahinda Rajapakse was in attendance, his personal guard of army commandos have been withdrawn by the government and replaced with a police protection guard.

Our Society condemns the weakening of the security of the ex-President Rajapakse as a callous and a calculated political manoeuvre. The weakening of the personal security of the ex- President Rajapakse is seen by many voters as an attempt to curtail the ex-President’s ability to move round the country to strengthen the ground swell of support. Mahinda Rajapakse is the prime target of the Tamil Tiger terrorists and the loosening of the security cordon is an open invitation to the suicide cadres of the resurgent Tamil Tigers terrorists in Sri Lanka and overseas.

If there is anyone in Sri Lanka who took upon his own shoulders to carry the will of people to eradicate the menace of Tamil Tiger terrorism, it was none other than Mahinda Rajapakse as President.  He did his duty by the people courageously at a time Sri Lanka was in dire straits, and when all other leaders were bending backwards and grovelling to the terrorists at the behest of foreign interference. Mahinda Rajapakse with all his more recent blunders and weaknesses, had his heart in the welfare of the people, and always places the national identity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Nation first.

His own political blunders were to the point of self destruction. In surrounding himself with a coterie of incompetent and self-serving politicians and ‘advisors’, who had little sympathy for the person or the Nation, became his downfall. Mahinda himself admits to the public that those were serious errors of judgement on his part during his later period in power.

Amongst the more far reaching errors was his failure to effect constitutional and structural reforms at the end of the conflict in 2009, to seal the Tamil racist demand for separation based on ethnic enclaves. Essentially, Mahinda failed to crown the military victory by not obliterating and purging the seven decade old racist separation agenda the Tamil Tiger lobby. If Sri Lanka is to live as an independent Nation with its head high, strong and courageous, political and constitutional reforms are needed to nullify the political agenda of the Tamil racists and their backers overseas.

The Nation needs the withdrawal from the now defunct, undemocratic and infamous Indo-Sri Lanka Pact that was shoved down the throats of Sri Lankans with the gun boat diplomacy of India in 1987.  Mahinda achieved a remarkable economic boom in Sri Lanka, post-conflict, which raced ahead in per capita income, and Sri Lanka progressed beyond being a developing nation to be the envy of the world in four years, but he neglected the constitutional reforms to consolidate the unitary state and making the Nation strong.

Mahinda Rajapakse is a ‘living national icon’ and his personal security is the duty of each and every citizen of the land. It is not one that is to be compared to any other person in the land. The threat to his life is real and the government should restore his protection as before. Any minor incident that occurs by the failure to do so would cause uncontrollable unrest and bloodshed, as millions adore Mahinda for the courageous stand he took against terrorism. The present government is cosying and grovelling to the rump of the Tamil Tiger terrorists, the Global Tamil Forum and other fronts. These treacherous connections provide the convenient safeguards to their own lives from assassinations.

Sri Lanka’s present government is a ship without a rudder. It is even without a GPS or a simple magnetic compass. It is drifting from blunder to blunder on a daily basis. In 80 years of self- government in Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka, has never seen the magnitude of political bungling, contradictions, hypocrisy, and institutionalised conflict of interest at the highest level of the land as seen today.

The elected President Maithripala Sirisena has his feet on both sides of the Parliamentary divide. Some of the Ministers work on a part time basis in both camps. Maithripala Sirisena is paradoxically the leader of his political party SLFP, which part is part in opposition, and with the other part of the government. This hodge podge gobbledygook was the work of Maithripala Sirisena in post-election horse trading, providing inducements for cross overs. The voters in the country have become totally disillusioned for the hijacking of the mandate given for a government that came to power on a catchy slogan of ‘Good Governance’.

To add insult to the injury, the present government has embarked on a project to destroy the will of the Nation, by masterminding the following:

• Appointing R.Sambandan, Leader of the Tamil national Alliance as Opposition leader from a group that has no more than a 19 member support in Parliament.  This appeasement to the ethnic Tamils and terrorist supporters has exacerbated the ethnic divide in Sri Lanka.  The true opposition was the UPFA elected by the people with a group of 95 members in a 225 member parliament. Due to their non-recognition within the Parliament 53 of these members successfully lobbied the Inter Parliamentary Union in Geneva for complementary and a token recognition as the legitimate opposition.
• Allowing the appointment twelve defeated candidates at the August 2015 Parliamentary elections as National List MPs, each of them commissioned to support the government’s proposed constitutional reforms.
• Delaying the conduct the country wide local government elections for six months, and postponing them indefinitely in the fear of a massive electoral slaughter.
• Seeking appeasement of the separatist lobby by allowing the singing of the National Anthem in Tamil when 90% of the citizens have a working knowledge of the native Sinhala language engaging in business, trade or employment around the island.
• Forcing a federalist constitutional reform not mandated by the people but an attempt to please the west and India
• Rushing in to sign an ‘Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement’ (ETCA) that will give wide advantage to Indians to take up jobs and business opportunities in Sri Lanka. Recent Indian interventions, and the earlier colonial power sponsored immigration from the time of the Dutch and the British has caused unimaginable and catastrophic social, political, economic consequences in Sri Lanka.
• Progressing a view that foreign judges are needed for the tribunals in Sri Lanka for alleged war crimes

Weakening the personal security of Mahinda Rajapakse – ‘a living national icon’ is heavily criticised by all  fair thinking people in Sri Lanka and is considered as a dastardly act by our Society. Further, our Society is of view that barring debate in Parliament on critical national issues is a clear hijacking of the people’s mandate and will lead to public unrest and violence. We urge the government not to make comparisons with any others but to give all protection needed to a unique ex-President Mahinda Rajapakse, the prime target of the Tamil Tigers.

Nimal Liyanage                                                                                 Dudley Upasiri

Spokesperson/Secretary                                                              President