By : A.A.M.NIZAM – MATARA

By the year 2000, the pig headed old hag Chandrika’s government became unpopular due to stagnation of development activities in the country and the economic growth of the country recording a negative growth for the first time. Under these circumstances, Minister S.B.Dissanayake and several other Ministers left the People’s Alliance government and joined the UNP. Ranil Wickremasinghe came forwarded to contest the 2000 General Election as the leader of the UNP giving a plethora of promises which included a peaceful end to the war, to give gold bracelets, gold chains and denim trousers to the youth, provide modern technology and computer knowledge to farmers, provide all essential food items at cheap prices and to reduce the cost of living.

Despite these promises his main undisclosed concern was to establish a cordial relationship with the LTTE and not to eliminate its threat and rescue the country.  He completely ignored the valour of our gallant forces, confined them to their barracks, and curtailed their military and personal requirements.  He re-established contacts with the pro-LTTE Norway and conveyed his willingness to enter into a Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) with the LTTE. This obnoxious CFA drafted by Norway in collaboration with LTTE was signed by Prabhakaran and Ranil on 22^nd February 2002 and the terms and conditions of the CFA were extremely unfavourable and harmful to Sri Lanka. After signing this agreement, the notorious Anton Balasingham, who was said to be the ideologue of the LTTE stated that Prabhakaran is the President and Prime Minister of the Tamil Eelam which is a sovereign and separate territory and Ranil Wickremasinghe is only the Prime Minister of the other part of the country known as Sri Lanka.

Although Chandrika was the duly elected President of the country at that time she did not take any action whatsoever to prevent the signing of the CFA and she covertly welcomed the agreement since she had already proposed to unconditionally handover the Northern Province to Prabhakaran for a period of 10 years.

The CFA was a gross violation of the sovereignty of Sri Lanka and our security forces were restricted from venturing out from their barracks while the LTTE cadres were permitted without any restriction to visit any part of the country and even to security services camps unhindered. The CFA also allowed LTTE terrorist leaders or cadres to visit foreign countries, carry out their propaganda activities in those countries, and get involved in fund raising and arms purchasing.

They were allowed free and unrestricted operation of naval activities in the maritime territories of North and East which helped them to smuggle in sophisticated and modern weaponry, including artillery.   They also had floating arms caches in the eastern seas and in the sea area adjoining the Mullaitivu coast.

Although there was a provision in the CFA to establish a mechanism for monitoring the operation of the CFA it was not clearly indicated about the composition of this monitoring mission and ultimately it was formed as a total Norwegian mission. Many violations of the CFA were reported but no one had the power to take preventive or remedial measures against such violations. There were also incidents of the mission members and even the head of the mission aiding and abetting in the activities of the LTTE.

During this time, the Ranil Wickremasinghe government also allowed the LTTE to bring in several container loads of sophisticated communication equipment and war material from European and western countries and these containers were authorized to be transported to the North and East unchecked.

During this period the LTTE also increased abduction of children in the North and East and issued a decree that at least one child from a family in the North and East should be handed over to the LTTE to serve in their forces. Military training using these forcibly recruited and abducted child soldiers were intensified and thereby increased the strength of their cadres while recruitments for the security forces by the government was reduced to the bare minimum.

Further, the LTTE terrorists widely carried out extortions of money from business establishments and people in the East and many people unable to face these exorbitant extortions migrated to Colombo district and other places. They also had a system of imposing taxes on all goods and material that crossed their borders which they got legally established through the CFA..

They established their own Police force, Police stations, their own court system and their own administrative structure with their own rules and regulations and virtually functioned as a de facto State in the North and East.

In the economic field the Ranil Wickremasinghe government introduced a policy plan called ‘regain Sri Lanka’ which completely discouraged agricultural and food production, encouraged export agriculture for instance replacing paddy production with cultivation of products like banana, and sale of state institutions and industries and providing incentives and tax free facilities to foreigners to establish their own industries.

It was in a situation like this, the old hag Chandrika was compelled to hold the Presidential election and she was forced to nominate Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse as the Presidential candidate of the SLFP but he received no support at all from the party for his election campaign officially and not even a pamphlet was issued by the party in support of his candidature. Despite various baseless and blatant rumours floated against Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse by the UNP, the LTTE issued a boycott notice of this election since they have by that time firmly convinced that they have already achieved their Separate State goal under their President Prabhakaran and hence they need not bother at all on anything that happens in the other part of the country called ‘Sri Lanka’ for which the election was being held.

It is not needed to elaborate here about the great and historical achievements made by President Mahinda Rajapakse as it is well known to all sensible and patriotic Sri Lankans and the subject of this article basically is on the atrocities of the UNP.

The cordial and economically viable relationships established by President Mahinda Rajapakse with Asia’s most powerful state China became an eye sore to the self styled global tyrants of the United States, Britain and the hegemonic India, the evil axis whose determined ambition was to restrict China militarily and economically and jeopardize China’s ambitious silk route project.  Since they had no way of meddling with Pakistan and Myanmar to endanger the silk route project only in Sri Lanka, the third and the most import link of the project this evil trio found a credible opening as it was in Sri Lanka they found a surfeit of foreign currency voracious NGO vultures, a host of unpatriotic rascals who would even sell their own mothers for economic benefits,  a glut of Buddhist monks and clergy of other religions who can easily be manipulated to carry out activities non compatible to their professed religions and scores of people who used to blindly believe in any form of lies and slanders.  The evil trio used the CIA, M16 ad the RAW espionage services to achieve their immoral plans, to establish a number of new organisations to implement their ‘regime change’ plan through and made Singapore as the base of their operation.

(Continued on Part V)