{"id":40568,"date":"2015-01-04T00:05:44","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T06:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=40568"},"modified":"2015-01-03T14:54:45","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T21:54:45","slug":"a-foreign-hand-in-the-presidential-stakes-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/01\/04\/a-foreign-hand-in-the-presidential-stakes-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"A Foreign hand in The Presidential Stakes 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Garvin Karunaratne<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

There is many an indication that outside forces are at work within our shores with sinister ideas of controlling our country today.<\/p>\n

In our living memory many are the instances where outside forces did interfere with us. This has taken different forms. Denying us Aid is an indirect interference. The USA is a master in this. In my words, Various ploys are in place like the PL480, a Scheme to give flour at low interest, at discounted prices and even at no interest to countries till the peoples palate gets used to flour as their staple diet\u201d and stopping supplies when it suits them.”(From Karunaratne: How the IMF Ruined Sri Lanka, Godages). At the other end is direct armed intervention, forcing our rulers and direct invasion. Sri Lanka has seen all these forces in action. The irony of all this is that we come to know what happened very late and\u00a0 we get fooled.<\/p>\n

Take the days of Prime Minister Sirimavo. The country faced many problems caused by forces from beyond. The bread queues at that time were not created by Dr N.M.Perera who was the Minister for Finance, as generally believed. Instead it was created by the USA which refused to give our country flour at the concessionary rate at which\u00a0 they were giving us for a long time earlier.\u00a0 The socialist policies in housing, in land acquisition that our country pursued were frowned upon by the USA and they decided not to give us flour at the concessionary rate under the PL 480\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Programme. We were forced to pay at the commercial rate which we did. As we did not have sufficient funds there was a shortage at times which caused the bread queues.<\/p>\n

The United Kingdom did not like our acquisition of estates and insisted that if we were to acquire the estates full payment should be made in foreign currency.\u00a0 The country had no option and we did pay the compensation.<\/p>\n

The Arab Oil Sheiks had increased the prices of oil threefold and we had to pay them hard cash which we did.<\/p>\n

It is to the credit of Dr N.M.Perera as Finaince Minister that we managed to face it without falling into debt. We managed to face the foreign interference. Sirimavo handed over a country that had no foreign debt to President Jayawardena in 1977.(The $ 750 million debt we had was on project development, where the project would have earned us an income. Then no loans were given for luxury living expenses- to live beyond one\u2019s means like in the post 1978 period.)<\/p>\n

Next we come to the 1971 JVP Rebellion. I served as the Government Agent at Matara\u00a0 The Government of Sirimavo was voted in at the General Election of 1970.\u00a0 The JVP youths were instrumental in the victory\u00a0 and they did rightly demand employment opportunities.\u00a0 The Government was also interested in creating employment and head hunted no less a person than Professor HadeS Gunasekera, the eminent professor of economics at the University of Peradeniya to tackle this problem of youth unemployment.\u00a0 They were discussing and putting plans- the DDCP- the Divisional Development Councils Programme into action when on April 5 th the JVP cadres tried to wrest the country by force.<\/p>\n

If it was a genuine attempt by the youth of the country, they had not given enough time for the Government to finalise a development programme. Actually their attack in April delayed development activities and all entrepreneurs- estate owners, rice millers etc.left the rural scene and took refuge in cities. Its effect is felt even today.<\/p>\n

On 5 th April 1971 it\u00a0 was an attack of all police stations and Army installations on one day- April 5 1971 and it did not succeed because of the failure of a communication link which made their cadres attack the police stations at Monaragala and Wellawaya on the 4 th April which gave a fore warning\u00a0 for all other police stations to be ready to meet an onslaught.<\/p>\n

Later it was found that the North Korean Embassy had been engaged in doling out vast sums of money and organizing the rebellion. The North Korean Embassy was closed down and the diplomats ordered out.<\/p>\n

At Matara on about the 6 th April we spotted through our field glasses a very large ship very close to the Dondra shore unloading something to boats. It was beyond the range of our machine guns. The Army sent a message to Headquarters and one of our planes came did a reconnaissance circle over the ship and machine gunned the boats. It was a tense moment watching the machine gunning that went on for a full fifteen minutes. We were worried that the air plane will be attacked by the ship. The plane left, the boats were not to be seen and the ship too vanished.\u00a0 I am certain that the ship belonged to a foreign force. We never had a ship of that dimension. At that time we were controlling only the Matara Town and in Dondra we controlled only the premises of the Police Station and we did not know anything more. As the Government Agent I had to forbid the fishing in the sea for around two weeks.<\/p>\n

In two weeks time the Government sent reinforcements for the Army and it took three weeks to bring Deniyaya back under our control. The JVP cadres took to the Sinharaja Hills. Strangely it was reported that a jeep belonging to an European\u00a0 Embassy was visiting Sinharaja. We informed the Army Headquarters and I informed the Ministries. We did not get any reply, but the jeep came again and again and because it was a DPL Jeep the Army and Police\u00a0 were vary of stopping to inquire what they were doing.. Finally I gave instructions for the Army Unit at Deniyaya to be on the watch out and follow the DLP jeep closely wherever it went, to be within yards to make it very obvious surveillance and to do some sabre rattling. This did the trick and the Jeep never came again<\/p>\n

Next is the interference by Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India\u00a0 to send\u00a0 sorties of fighter planes to fly low over Colombo and to drop food parcels in Jaffna. Finally Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi compelled President Jayawaredena to accept the 13 th Anmendment to the Constitution of Sri lanka. The agreement was to send the Indian Army to defeat the LTTE in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 The IPKF ruled the North and parts of the East but never defeated the LTTE. I once spoke with an high ranking officer of our armed forces that had to work with the IPKF and his opinion was that the IPKF was not interested in defeating the LTTE, but working on a plan to introduce a third force which they could not finalise as President Premadasa ordered them to leave.<\/p>\n

Let us get down to the LTTE Rebellion.<\/p>\n

This was organized by India who took the LTTE cadres to South India, trained them in army camps and sent them back, with state of the art sophisticated weaponry\u00a0 to destabilize Sri Lanka. There were talks that India was training the cadres but no tangible evidence was found. The first evidence was a publication by Denzil Peris, the Sub Editor of the South, a UK Magazine. The article contained firm evidence of the Army camps where the LTTE was trained. Not long after,\u00a0 Denzil Peris\u00a0 died very strangely at a Restaurant in London. When he left for work that morning he was hail and hearty, suddenly taken ill at his restaurant meal. Our intelligence was even unaware of this.<\/p>\n

Indhira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India did totally destabilize Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Next comes the nefarious activities of Norway in establishing the Red Baana Colonisation Schemes in the area between the Northern and Eastern Provinces, taking Tamil youths from the Hill Country plantations and settling them down there. It had gone on without the knowledge of our Government.\u00a0 This happened during the days of President Jayawardena and no action was taken to destroy the settlements and send the settled youths back. No action was taken against Norway. The fact is that the settlements were in that section right between the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the area that had to be bridged with Tamil people to justify the merger of the two provinces. The youths that were settled are there even today.<\/p>\n

Next we have the Cease Fire Agreement of 2002, where Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe forged an Agreement between the LTTE and the Government of Sri lanka without Cabinet approval or the approval of Parliament, by which the LTTE was accorded an equal place to the Government of the country and the LTTE was accepted as the ruler of that area. This was also brokered by the Norwegians.<\/p>\n

Next comes the ISGA- the Interim Self Government Agreement\u00a0 also brokered by the Norwegians agreed by Prime Minister Wickremasinghe without the approval of Parliament. By the ISGA the LTTE was accorded the power to collect taxes and run the administration, was authorized to borrow money from abroad. It was a path to an independent state.<\/p>\n

Next we have the PTOMS- the Post Tsunami\u00a0 Operational Management Structure also brokered by the Norwegians and furthered by President Kumaranatunge without the approval of Parliament.\u00a0 By the PTOMS the Government of Sri Lanka was accorded a subservient place to both the LTTE and the Muslims.<\/p>\n

(For more details on the CFA, ISGA and PTOMS, please see my paper in the Lanka Web of January 1, 2015<\/p>\n

It is also important to note that a Japanese Tsunami vounteer force\u00a0 in 2005 carved out an under water tunnel\u00a0 that would have enabled LTTE cadres to escape unobserved to the outer seas.(From the Island.lk) At the last stages the sea front was\u00a0 fully covered by our Navy and this under sea tunnel was never used.<\/p>\n

Finally in 2009,\u00a0 on the\u00a0 eve of finally defeating the LTTE, we have many Superpowers insisting on President Rajapaksa not to fully defeat the LTTE but to talk peace and allow them to continue. This was the French Foreign Minister Kouchner and the Foreign Minister of Britain David Milliband. President Rajapaksa stood to his guns\u00a0 and had finally to tell David Milliband that Sri lanka is no longer a colony of Britain.\u00a0 He is the one and only leader alive who never betrayed his Motherland.<\/p>\n

Next we come to the Presidential Election 2015 which is proceeding.\u00a0 The manner in which our discredited leaders who have sojourned in foreign countries have come back to hold the reins\u00a0 to control the steed– the Common Candidate and how the Common Candidate is dancing to the tunes played by the UNP and former President Kumaranatunge tell me that a foreign hand is at work. Of that\u00a0 we shall see more\u00a0 if we are alert.<\/p>\n

It is up to our voters to expect the unseen hand of foreign forces at work and to identify our leaders who worked with the sinister outside forces to the detriment of our Montherland,\u00a0 betraying\u00a0 us.\u00a0 Otherwise our Motherland will be lost<\/strong>. This time it is my thinking is that it could be lost for ever.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

The price of peace is eternal vigilance<\/p>\n

Garvin Karunaratne, formerly of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service,<\/p>\n

2\/1\/2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Garvin Karunaratne There is many an indication that outside forces are at work within our shores with sinister ideas of controlling our country today. In our living memory many are the instances where outside forces did interfere with us. This has taken different forms. Denying us Aid is an indirect interference. The USA is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-garvin-karunaratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}