{"id":96110,"date":"2019-12-07T16:53:27","date_gmt":"2019-12-07T23:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=96110"},"modified":"2019-12-07T16:53:27","modified_gmt":"2019-12-07T23:53:27","slug":"sinhalaese-must-vote-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/12\/07\/sinhalaese-must-vote-labour\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinhalaese must vote Labour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chanaka Bandarage<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The\nBritish Conservative Party election manifesto in page 53 states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will continue to\nsupport international initiatives to achieve reconciliation, stability and\njustice across the world, and in current or former conflict zones such as\nCyprus, Sri Lanka and the Middle East, where we maintain our support for a\ntwo-state solution\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ntext is very clear. It is in plain, easy to understand English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\nis, if the Conservative Party is elected to power at the 12 December 2019\ngeneral election, it will support a two state solution for Sri Lanka. This\nbasically means the creation of the Tamil \nEelam in Sri Lanka. This was the demand of the megalomaniac Terrorist\nLeader Prabhakaran who was killed by the Sri Lankan armed forces on 19 May\n2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According\nto the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Relations, the Conservative Party has\nmade following clarifications since issuing the election manifesto:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026. the Deputy\nChair of the Conservative Party Paul Scully issued the following clarification\non the subject to the High Commissioner by his email\ncommunication of 27 November 2019:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The party\u2019s position regarding Sri Lanka has not changed\u2026 To be\nabsolutely clear, the two-state line in the section was intended to refer only\nto the Israel-Palestine situation in the Middle East (as is stated\npolicy).  The commitments to Sri Lanka and Cyprus were simply about\ncontinuing existing efforts to support peace and reconciliation in divided\nsocieties.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above\nposition has also been reiterated by Theresa Villiers, Secretary of State for\nEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs of the UK through her\npublic post on social media (Facebook) of 30 November\nwhere she has further added the following:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\n\u2018The subsequent reference to a two-state solution\nrefers to the Middle East, NOT to Cyprus or Sri Lanka.  I have been in\ncontact with Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, and he has confirmed this. \u2018<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservative party Deputy Chair Paul Scully has <\/em>in his twitter message of 3 December 2019 once again reiterated the above\nposition of the Conservative party, stating the following:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There is no\nConservative manifesto commitment relating to the makeup of governance of Sri\nLanka. \u2026 two state relate only to Middle East.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nMinistry of Foreign Relations is of the view that the above would clarify the\nposition of the Conservative party on the issue as well as action taken by the\nMinistry of Foreign Relations and the High Commission in London to correct the\ndistortion.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Re above\nlast paragraph, the Ministry of Foreign Relations (or the Sri Lankan High\nCommission in London) are not qualified to state that the Conservative Party\nhas clarified its position. The clarification must come from the \u2018horse\u2019s\nmouth\u2019, formally.  The Sri Lankan Ministry\nof Foreign Relations is not privy to the Conservative Party\u2019s internal tactics\nand policies. The Email, Twitter and the Facebook messages by Paul Scully and Theresa Villiers may be authentic. But, they are not the\nConservative Party.  The fact of the\nmatter is that despite Sri Lanka\u2019s vehement protest the Conservative Party has\nnot amended its election manifesto.  The\nadverse policy in relation to Sri Lanka continues to stand, as first announced.\nThe Conservative Party has not  even\nissued a formal\/official response that what the Party\nhas actually meant was that the two state policy only applies to the Middle\nEast, and it believes in reconciliation to solve Sri Lanka\u2019s ethnic problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, the language in the current\nConservative Party election manifesto is crystal clear and unambiguous \u2013 they\nsupport a two state solution in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since defeating the Tamil Tigers there\nhas been much progress in regards to Sri Lanka\u2019s ethnic relations.  Sinhalese and Tamils now live happily in Sri\nLanka as a One Nation. Not even the ultra extremist Tamil groups in Sri Lanka\nare demanding a Tamil Eelam. In the recently concluded Presidential Election,\nTamils, especially the Northern Tamils, voted for Sinhalese politicians, even\ndisregarding a strong Tamil candidate. Everyone in Sri Lanka talks about such\npositive things as reconciliation etc today, not about creating two states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, why does Mr Johnson led\nConservative Party have intentions to work to divide Sri Lanka if it wins the\nforthcoming general election? Why did they change their policy on Sri Lanka\nsuddenly? Anyone would agree that this has been done to please the large Sri\nLankan Tamil voter base in the UK \u2013 instigating them to vote for the\nConservative Party.  The Conservative\nParty must have thought that through such a promise, they could win the Sri\nLankan Tamil vote.  It is a fact that the\nUK based Tamil groups are very active and fiercely lobby both the Conservative\nand Labour Parties (and also other parties) to take\naction to split Sri Lanka into two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a very bad, unethical practice\non the part of the Conservative Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Johnson and the Conservative Party\nhave failed to realise that though quiet, there is a very large Sinhalese\npopulation in the UK and their numbers far exceed that of the Sri Lankan\nTamils. If the Conservative Party wants to play politics with the Sri Lankan\nvote of the UK, the Sinhalese voters should reciprocate in kind.  They should en-mass vote for the Labour\nParty.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Labour Party has not adopted such\nan adverse policy against Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally many Sinhalese vote for the\nConservative Party. But, on this occasion they should send a clear message to\nthe Conservative Party \u2013 that they do not support its current position that Sri\nLanka should be divided on ethnic lines and that a Tamil Eelam should be\ncreated in Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese would change their mind if prior to the\nelection the Conservative Party amends \nits election manifesto or issues a formal communique stating\nunequivocally that it does not believe in a two state system for Sri Lanka, and\nit only promotes reconciliation for Sri Lanka. Again, this must be done\nformally, by the Conservative Party Headquarters \u2013 the body that issued the\nelection manifesto, not through Email\/Twitter\/Facebook messages by individual\nConservative Party politicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chanaka Bandarage The British Conservative Party election manifesto in page 53 states: We will continue to support international initiatives to achieve reconciliation, stability and justice across the world, and in current or former conflict zones such as Cyprus, Sri Lanka and the Middle East, where we maintain our support for a two-state solution\u201d. The text […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanaka-bandarage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96110","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=96110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}