{"id":59202,"date":"2016-09-28T23:10:17","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T05:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=59202"},"modified":"2016-09-28T15:34:38","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T22:34:38","slug":"what-was-in-the-secret-note-biswal-gave-when-maithri-kerry-discussed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/09\/28\/what-was-in-the-secret-note-biswal-gave-when-maithri-kerry-discussed\/","title":{"rendered":"What was in the secret note Biswal gave when Maithri-Kerry discussed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Upul Joseph Fernando\u00a0Courtesy Ceylon Today<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

An incident of curiosity took place during the meeting between the Secretary of State of USA John Kerry and President Maithripala Sirisena in New York America. Assistant Secretary Nisha Biswal who participated in this meeting, sent a note to John Kerry. Kerry who read the note asked Maithri about the situation of the UNP-SLFP National Government. If Maithri had a doubt as to why Nisha Biswal sent a note to Kerry requesting him to ask about the National Government, it is justified. However, it would have been Mangala and Ranil who were really happy about Nisha Biswal’s note.<\/p>\n

The reason is that Ranil was disturbed about the United National Party (UNP) parliamentarians who had gone to America with Maithripala. There is no doubt that Ranil would have been suspicious regarding the fact that his Members of Parliament had gone to New York without informing either him or his assistant. In the face of accusations targetting Ranil that he is using Mahinda in an attempt to divide the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) it is possible that Ranil could believe that Maithripala is attempting to get UNP parliamentarians to turn towards him. Anyhow, there is no doubt that the news that Ranil’s faction was going to question the UNP Members of Parliament who went with Maithri would have succeeded in perturbing Maithri. That news item was definitely an attack on Maithri. If the UNP parliamentarians had gone to New York with Maithri without telling Ranil, this problem should have been discussed between Ranil and Maithri and settled. However, telling the media this has shown not only the country but the international community that there is a huge conflict between the two.<\/p>\n

We do not know whether John Kerry asked about the situation of the National Government, while being aware of these problems that exist within the government or not. The note was sent to John Kerry by Nisha Biswal. She is a friend of Minister Mangala Samaraweera. Even though Ranil had problems with Mangala’s Foreign Ministry later Ranil forgot about those problems. Ranil appointed committees to implement the foreign policy of the government saying that it was not being implemented properly by Mangala’s Foreign Ministry. Not only that, Ranil had discussed this issue with Maithri as well. We do not know whether Ranil all of a sudden stopped interfering in the Foreign Ministry because Mangala took on the responsibility taking Ranil’s voice to the international community or not.<\/p>\n

A cold war<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is clear that a cold war has been launched between Maithri and Ranil to win over the international community. The Maithri faction would have thought that in this cold war Mangala was trying to obtain advantages for Ranil. That is why the Maithri faction is rejecting the statement made by Mangala regarding war crimes. The number one objective of Maithri and his faction is to get rid of Mahinda and the Rajapaksa family from politics. They feel that, the agenda on war crimes in western countries including America is an obstacle. It would have shown that the Maithri faction is showing a fear that through this the Sinhala Buddhist public would line up with Mahinda. Therefore, it is apparent that an effort is underway to change the way that the agenda on war crimes is seen by the Sinhala Buddhist people. Here, it is apparent that Mangala is working closely with Tamil Diaspora organizations such as the Global Tamil Forum. Ranil is not objecting to that because he is thinking possibly that at the next general election the UNP would be able to win over the support of the Tamil people.<\/p>\n

The cold war between Maithri and Ranil to win over the international community is a sign of precedence to winning over the Tamil people at the next general election. It is possible that Mangala has made Ranil to understand that by winning over the Tamil Diaspora it will be possible to acquire the Tamil votes. It is also quite possible that Mangala is telling Ranil that they should work according to the agenda of western countries on war crimes because of that. However, there is the likelihood that Maithri is fearful of the fact that Mangala’s project is destroying Maithri’s political project of not allowing the Rajapaksa family including Mahinda to raise their heads once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Upul Joseph Fernando\u00a0Courtesy Ceylon Today An incident of curiosity took place during the meeting between the Secretary of State of USA John Kerry and President Maithripala Sirisena in New York America. Assistant Secretary Nisha Biswal who participated in this meeting, sent a note to John Kerry. Kerry who read the note asked Maithri about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,108,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-ranil","category-sirisena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59202","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=59202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}