By : A.A.M.NIZAM – MATARA

First of all it has become pertinent to ask this inept visionless government whether it has two yardsticks to treat the people of this country – a separate benchmark to gauge people in the North and East and a different criteria to apply for the people in the South.  We find that when Sirisena and Ranil address the people in the North and East (the Tamils) they address them very politely, kindly, compassionately and in a very friendly manner.  On the contrary when they address the people in the South their tone and the style of expression change and sometimes it also takes a very and warning attitude.

Let us analyse this matter deeply. The reality is when protests, demonstrations, and Hartals are held in the North there is a minimum Police presence, STF and army is strictly confined to barracks, there are no road blocks, there is no closure of roads, and there are no water cannon attacks or baton charging even if they cause damage to public buildings and they are rallowed to disperse peacefully after they adequately register their oppositions. The people of the North have not experienced the cruelty of the water cannons and baton charges or they have not been dragged as dogs and animals, hospitalized or locked up in prisons for staging protests, and demonstrations .  The so-called freedom of expression and freedom of protests are allowed to function there fully and freely as it was promised in Sirisena’s and Ranul’s manifestoes.

Students in the North can freely hold commemoration of the megalomaniac Ptabhakaran, can boycott classes, hold demonstrations, and even assault police officers and demand removal of army camps.

Even when they held commemorations on May 18^th for the megalomaniac Prabhakaran who was responsible for the death of more than 30,000 of our war heroes, making several thousand other war heroes disabled, death of several Buddhist monks, death of several thousand unarmed civilians including women and children, destruction and desecration of religious places of worship including slaughter of people while in worship or meditation, and destruction of state and private properties worth several thousand millions not a single arrest of those involved in commemoration events related to this megalomaniac was made despite knowing very well the leaders who organized those commemorations.

People are allowed to meet the President or the Prime Minister directly whenever they visit North, their so-called grievances are being looked into politely and possible solutions are provided instantly or the relevant officials in Colombo are contacted immediately and instructed to take immediate action to solve their problems.

The Chief Minister of the Northern Province Mr. C.V.Wigneswaran had been very vocal about his objection to Temples, Bo-trees and about his demand to remove the army from the North with ultimatum dates. Neither Sirisena nor Ranil has said a word against his threats and these two foreign slavish puppets remain like that Wigneswaran and they are in two different worlds and as the Northern Province is not a part of Sri Lanka and people there can do anything they want.

Fishermen’s societies protest and obstruct fishermen from the South engaging in fishing activities in the Northern coast complaining that Sinhala fishermen are causing destruction to the ecosystem, but remain aloof to destructions being caused daily and throughout the year by Tamil Nadu fishermen. Sinhala fishermen from Weligama, Mirissa, Devinuwara, Gandara, Kottegoda in the South and from places like Ja-Ela, Mattakkuliya, Negombo and Chilaw used to have Chaalai to Naagar-koavil in the Jaffna district and other coastal areas in the North as their second home during the off seasons in the South prior to the war period.

Let us now see what happens in the South?

• Students get hammered with high pressured water cannons, tear gassed, baton charged. and hospitalised due to Police attacks, rounded up like dogs and animals and dumped in prisons and no mercy is shown to their parents and they too get attacked.
• The Police are reported to have assaulted and taken action against nearly 450 students during the last two years.
• People are not allowed to hold demonstrations, not allowed to stage protests marches roads kept barricaded with heavy Police presence including with Police personnel brought from outstations and Police dogs, no demonstrator allowed to meet that His Excellency President or  His Excellency the Prime Minister or not allowed to enter the sacred Presidential Secretariat or the Prime Minister’s residence.
• Learned doctors and scholars are being humiliated, disgraced and not allowed to express their views and suggestions and they are forced to function as damp squibs.
• Demands from students, doctors, professionals, scholars, political parties and the general public to close down the illegal SAITM degree shop have been ignored and those who make this demand subjected to penalization.
• The loquacious dentist Rajitha Senaratne has said that the President ruled out further discussions with doctors over private higher education, withdraw the concessionary duty facility to import motor vehicles, declare the health sector an essential service and confiscate property of striking medical officers
• Disaster struck people are ignored and neglected and it was TV channels, private companies and social organizations that rush to the assistance of the victimized people.  This was clearly evident during the recent floods and many in the government including some idiots claiming that they are engineers blamed the previous government for constructing expressways and these expressways being responsible for causing the floods.
• Compensation promised to people affected by earlier disasters such as droughts landslides, Saalaawa camp blast, collapse of the Meethotamulla garbage mountain and 2016 Colombo floods languish yet in tents and various other places without the promises made to them being fulfilled and without being compensated for their losses..
• Despite existing of a laudable plan for solving the Colombo garbage problem by transporting garbage by train to Puttalam and funds for this project being already allocated by the previous government the project was stalled because it was a plan made by Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.  The Colombo City which received international recognition as South Asia’s No. 1 clean and beautiful city has now become the dirtiest and stinking city in the whole world. Garbage is being dumped all over the city and they are not removed for days. Attempts to deploy war heroes for remove garbage backfired due to protests.
• Dengue epidemic has spread to a dangerous extent and already over 230 patients have succumbed to this disease due to the failure of the Minister of Health to combat this disease.  The ignoramus Health Minister says that the number of dengue patients in a country increase when a country becomes developed.
• Hospitals in Colombo are severely overcrowded with dengue and influenza patients with two or three patients occupying a single ed and some sleeping underneath the beds and some others sleeping on the floor and corridors.

What a contrast between the North and the South in the same country? Only 16 MPs from the North and East in the 225 member Parliament have made their areas a fairyland and other areas remain as a hellhole. The basic that the government should be fair to all alike in a democracy seems to be not applicable to the people in the South in this country. All these atrocities against the people in the South happen because that the government and the President embrace the view that they came to power because of the en bloc votes of the Tamils, Until and unless this foreign and Tamil slavish government is forced to go home there will be no salvation for the people in the South. .