CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

Time to protect all citizens

S. Akurugoda

Wide publicity has been given in the print and electronic media, to a claim that Colombo District Western Peoples's Front Parliamentarian Mano Ganeshan was leaving the country temporally as his life was in danger. It is reported that after the assassinations of a number of Tamil parliamentarians, including Maheswaran, he felt that he would also be killed as he was a strong critic of the government's policies towards the Tamil people.

The assassinations of all most all Tamil politicians/parliamentarians (who were comfortably living among the majority community including late Maheswaran) were well planned carried out by the Tamil Tigers as and when the outfit feels comfortable for them to do so, although the opportunist attempted at their best to tarnish the image of the government in each case citing various reasons. The tragic-comedy now being staged by the UNPers is a case in point.

As per media reports, Maheswaran was one of the wealthiest businessmen in Colombo and his fleet of ferrying supplies to the Jaffna peninsula was said to be bigger than that of the Ceylon Shipping Corporation. Obviously, the LTTE wouldn't have allowed him to engage in business, especially ferrying supplies to Jaffna, without collecting a cut as the news item reported. If I remember correct, not long ago, there were media reports to say that one of the vessels owned by the same Maheswaran was caught with a shipment containing parts of a light aircraft. For some unknown reasons, the matter died down with time.

Apart from representing a section of the Tamil population in Colombo as a MP, it is a well known fact that Mano Ganeshan too has other interest, especially in tarnishing the image of Sri Lanka and its people. Parliamentarians are expected to represent their voters in the parliament (that is why they are called parliamentarians or the Members of Parliament) and act within the frame work of the institution they belong to. Mano Ganeshan was one of the vociferous actors appearing in video clips prepared by some foreign correspondents and shown in many parts of the world accusing the government of Sri Lanka for alleged disappearance of people and human rights violations, while carefully avoiding to utter a single world against the disappearance, abduction, force recruitment, child abusing and mass murdering carried out by his well-wishers in the Wanni. The interesting thing we noted in those video clips was that this one-sided so-called human rights activist was accusing Sinhala people for discrimination against Tamils and the government of Sri Lanka while surrounded by a group of Sinhala Security staff provided by the government of Sri Lanka.

In fact, a Sinhala Security guard who was entrusted to protect the life of late MP Raviraj, had sacrificed his life while guarding the politician. Even in the case Maheswaran, the Sinhala security guard had fought back with the assailant and got injured. How many innocent lives including school children were lost and how many are suffering as a result of the most recent terrorist attack in Nugegoda and Slave Island? Who is protecting the lives of the innocent citizens other than the politicians? Are we not considering that their lives are not important as these politicians? The lives of innocent people including those security personnel who were assigned to protect the lives of politicians are equally or more important since these politicians who appeared to be full time (or most of their time) engaged in extra parliamentary activities which are not relevant their task as MPs or activities harmful to the nation as a whole.

It is reasonable to believe that these politicians have acquired enough wealth through business and other means (to leave the country and live as and when required) apart from the income and benefits received as MPs to employ their own security staff instead of blaming the government for not providing adequate personal security.

No government should be expected to spent tax payers money to provide security to personal engaged in business or to cover other interests just because they are highly connected politicians or parliamentarians and it should be the businessmen/activists interest to protect their own lives, if in danger, by employing their own security staff.

Instead of providing more and more security personal to this type of politicians, time has come to protect every individual citizen affected by removing the course of insecurity, the terrorism, once and for all.

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