{"id":68183,"date":"2017-07-24T17:11:36","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T00:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=68183"},"modified":"2017-07-24T17:11:36","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T00:11:36","slug":"rajapaksa-is-walking-into-a-huge-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/07\/24\/rajapaksa-is-walking-into-a-huge-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"Rajapaksa is walking into a huge trap"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"site-title\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/lankafuture.wordpress.com\/\" rel=\"home\">THE WAY AHEAD FOR SRI LANKA<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The recent silence from Mahinda Rajapaksa and his Joint Opposition grouping regarding present disasters going on in the country is very disturbing. Dengue, garbage, economic collapse, and student strikes are doing untold damage. Uprisings and haarthals in the north and east are weakening the state.<\/p>\n<p>And more importantly the emergency of the upcoming fake war crimes\u201d witch-hunt that the Sirisena-Ranil regime is about to start, targeting the war heroes who fought and died to save the country from the world\u2019s most deadly Tamil terrorist killer group, should concern any right thinking citizen.<\/p>\n<p>Rajapaksa is also adamantly staying as part of the committee that is creating a new, foreign-written constitution for the country.<\/p>\n<p>Does he not realize that the purpose of the new constitution is precisely to lay the foundation for a foreign and minority-extremist dominated government? One in which Sri Lanka is returned to colony status? One in which he and his entire family are classed as war criminals?<\/p>\n<p>The impending war crimes witch-hunt is going to destroy the military and tarnish the image of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n<p>Mahinda\u2019s attitude however is that he couldn\u2019t care less. Watch here how he grins and laughs without a care in the world, as he stubbornly stays within the constitutional committee:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Joint Opposition will stay in Constitutional Assembly - Rajapaksa\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4ifWCOy4HUI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Does he not realise that in any war crimes investigation, ultimately it is the political leaders of the country who bear most responsibility. If war crimes\u201d occur in any country, those who are punished hardest and most severely will be the leaders of that country.<\/p>\n<p>Mahinda and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa will be turned into international pariahs and will be taken to Europe for their trial\u201d and punishment. They will receive life-long sentences and will never be able to set foot in Sri Lanka again.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, the entire Rajapaksa family will be branded as criminals and never allowed to take part in the political field or any other civic activity.<\/p>\n<p>After winning the war and being rightly rewarded with a second term and a two-thirds majority in parliament, Rajapaksa literally went mad with power. He surrounded himself with sycophants, suck-ups and political degenerates. He embraced thugs and protected them, released murderers from prison for New Year, and paid for criminals to be treated abroad.<\/p>\n<p>He cast aside anyone with intelligence or decency as soon as the most immediate use for them was over (Dayan Jayatilleka, Tamara Kunanayakam). He never listened to sound advice. He never stood for principles, but thought he could shape\u201d anyone and everyone, in Sri Lanka and abroad.<\/p>\n<p>All this shows that he took the job of governing to be a huge joke. He took power for granted, and thought he could play the role of magnanimous king.<\/p>\n<p>He intervened to help his nemesis Ranil keep hold of power in the UNP \u2013 Ranil repaid him by helping the jealous Sirisena take over the SLFP and eject Rajapaksa from the party. He held a snap election to please the Pope \u2013 when the Pope arrived, Rajapaksa was out of power and facing arrest.<\/p>\n<p>With the aim of pleasing his children, he held night-races in Kandy \u2013 now his children spend nights in rotten jails. He didn\u2019t ban Facebook even as it was filled with opposition and terrorist-created lies and rumors about him and his family \u2013 now he posts the odd message to social media, never knowing when his civic rights will be removed.<\/p>\n<p>The foolish things, the stupid things, and the outright wrong things Rajapaksa did during his time in power finally came back to haunt him.<\/p>\n<p>If he had stood firm against foreign meddling in the country, by shutting down NGOs, regulating the salacious press, prosecuting those like Ravi, Laxman, and Mangala who denigrated the war effort in parliament during the war and who spread filth about war crimes\u201d after the war, and if he created a lawful and just society, he would have won not just a third term but also a fourth, fifth and sixth term.<\/p>\n<p>Now he has come out of the hole he himself made, thanks to the steadfastness and political skill of principled politicians like Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila. The success of the Joint Opposition May Day rally 2017 showed him that he still has huge appeal among the masses, definitely more than in 2015 and perhaps almost as much support as in 2009 after the war victory.<\/p>\n<p>However a May Day rally is not the same as an election win. But the crowd size on the one hand and the total incompentence of the Sirisena-Ranil regime on the other hand has again activated the same big-headedness and over-confidence which doomed Rajapaksa in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>He is taking part in the constitutional committee which will call for a war crimes\u201d tribunal. When he is hauled up before it, and when Rajapksa complains, Sirisena will smugly say well you agreed to this because you were on the committee that proposed it\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Rajapaksa thinks that he can take part in the committee and then just not vote for it in parliament. But Sirisena will say correctly, that it is hypocritical to take part in the constitution writing committee and then to reject it at the vote. Sirisena will say that Rajapaksa is trying to score political points and isn\u2019t interested in the country\u2019s future.<\/p>\n<p>If Mahinda cannot figure out these elementary truths, Mahinda\u2019s son Namal Rajapaksa as a parliamentarian and lawyer educated abroad should be able to. He should be guiding his father who is stuck in the past and unable to get with the times. He should tell his father that the political landscape has changed, that the old tricks and crossovers and other third-world political games will not work now. He should tell his father that once the constitution process and fake war crimes\u201d investigations begin, it will only end with their entire family in jail.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, he too is blindly following his father into the even deeper hole that is right next to the first hole that Rajapaksa just crawled out of.<\/p>\n<p>Let these words be well remembered: Continuing to take part in the constitutional committee, and not taking to the streets now to denounce this new imperialist constitution and the war crimes\u201d witch-hunt, is a mistake even greater than the combined idiocy of 1.) keeping Sirisena as the SLFP general secretary for ten years and 2.) of not cancelling the presidential election the moment Sirisena emerged as the Common Candidate.<\/p>\n<p>The only way to navigate the dungeon that Rajapaksa has put himself and his family in is to stand up for the principles of no foreign interference in the country, and no fake war crimes\u201d witch-hunts. This can be summed up as standing for national sovereignty.<\/p>\n<p>Stand up for national sovereignty now, before it is too late for you, your family, for our innocent war heroes and for our entire Nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE WAY AHEAD FOR SRI LANKA The recent silence from Mahinda Rajapaksa and his Joint Opposition grouping regarding present disasters going on in the country is very disturbing. Dengue, garbage, economic collapse, and student strikes are doing untold damage. Uprisings and haarthals in the north and east are weakening the state. And more importantly the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68183","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=68183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}