{"id":74362,"date":"2018-02-03T18:36:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-04T01:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=74362"},"modified":"2018-02-03T18:36:42","modified_gmt":"2018-02-04T01:36:42","slug":"i-am-not-a-racist-and-i-cannot-be-a-racist-former-president-mr-mahinda-rajapaksa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/02\/03\/i-am-not-a-racist-and-i-cannot-be-a-racist-former-president-mr-mahinda-rajapaksa\/","title":{"rendered":"I am not a racist and I cannot be a racist. –\u00a0 Former President Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa."},"content":{"rendered":"

Translated by : A.A.M.NIZAM \u2013 MATARA<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Addressing a meeting held at the Weerasingham Hall in Jaffna, the former President Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa emphasized that he is not a racist and he cannot be a racist as one of his sisters is married to a Tamil from Jaffna.\u00a0\u00a0 He focused his whole speech to compare the services done to the North by his government and by this government and said that the present government is a fusion of UNP\/SLFP\/JVP and TNA.\u00a0 But yet this government has failed to construct even a culvert in the North. He said that Sambandan is fooling the Tamil people and slavishly remains in the pocket of Ranil Wickremasighe.<\/p>\n

Speaking further he said that he is happy to come to the North after 3 years and speak to the people of the North.\u00a0 He asked whether prices of goods are cheaper in the North now.\u00a0 He explained that in the past that there freedom had been restricted and if they wanted to go to Colombo they had to face about 100 barriers and there were no electricity, no water supply and no development activities and everything were completely destroyed and people used to look at each other suspiciously and even children were not safe.\u00a0 Mr. Rajapaksa said that his government freed them from all this hassle and now people in the North can live freely and children can attend to their studies. We were happy when s student from this area became first in the Advanced Level Science Stream. Unfortunately for various reasons we lost on 8th<\/sup> January 2015, but he said that he got several hundred thousand more votes from this area than the votes he got in 2010. He asked what was not developed in the North during his period? Mr. Rajapaksa reminded that 90% of the population of the North was provided with electricity and water, roads, schools and science laboratories were given, the historical library destroyed by the UNP was reconstructed and given, the train service which had been suspended for several years was given, and the best hospital in Sri Lanka was given.\u00a0 He said that his government did all this work because it wanted to have development in the North similar to the development we had in the South.\u00a0 Speaking further he also stated that his government demined paddy fields and made it possible to undertake paddy cultivation and provided subsidized fertilizer at Rs. 350 per bag.\u00a0 He said there is no fertilizer today and if it became necessary to get fertilizer for cultivation they have to wait until a fertilizer ship comes from Pakistan. Similarly for everything we have to wait now for the arrival of ships from overseas.\u00a0 All these things were produced earlier by you locally but there is no market for your products.<\/p>\n

This government is a combination of four main political parties. Mr. Sambandan is now in Ranil Wickremasinghe\u2019s pocket.\u00a0 He is the uncle of this Arun Thambimuttu.\u00a0 But Sambaandan is on the other side. Mr. Saambaandan comes here and utters lies saying tht they will give a separate state, they will give this and they will give that.\u00a0 He is fooling you, and distancing you from us.<\/p>\n

I made a prposal to Sambandan to hold a discussion to get the existing problems solved.\u00a0 He said that he will come back after discussing with Sumnthiran and others and never turned up.\u00a0 When we were having 54 members he was appointed as the Leader of the Opposition with only 16 members. But the opposition leader should represent the opposition, on the contrart it was he who first voted for the budget<\/p>\n

I was surprised to hear when the MP Sivashakthi Ananthan said recently that the UNP government provided Rs. 20 Million each for 15 TNA MPs to vote for the budget.\u00a0 It was a serious charge and there is no response for this charge yet.\u00a0 One MP however admitting making of this payment has said that it was given for a project but no project has been implemented.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The time has come for the people to question about this.\u00a0 There is no point of blaming us.<\/p>\n

The government should refrain from fooling the people of theNorth.\u00a0 The people of the\u00a0 North and the people of the East should live honourably.\u00a0 If they took their votes with false promises they should fulfil those promises.\u00a0 Therefore do not cast your valuable vote for any of the combine parties in the government UNP\/SLFP\/JVP and TNA.<\/p>\n

We are not racists as we have been misbranded for political expedienct by some racist politicians.\u00a0 In my case I can never b a racist. A sister of mine is married to a Tamil from the North with Mr. Thiru Nadesan.\u00a0 At least we must get ready to put an end to this fooling of the people of the North without solving any of their probles and keeping it ever like the wound of a begger.\u00a0 Therefore please trust us.\u00a0 We are now coming from a different party, and a different group with a new thinking and with a new symbol.\u00a0 The Flower Bud is our symbol.\u00a0 Vote for the Flower Bud this time and see the difference. Be victorius and let Flower Bud be victorious!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Translated by : A.A.M.NIZAM \u2013 MATARA Addressing a meeting held at the Weerasingham Hall in Jaffna, the former President Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa emphasized that he is not a racist and he cannot be a racist as one of his sisters is married to a Tamil from Jaffna.\u00a0\u00a0 He focused his whole speech to compare the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aamnizam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74362","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=74362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}