Lanka Citizen

A friendly advice to Ranil

Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe has invited us citizens to write to him; I have no doubt that he would have received thousands of letters and a selected few of them may be submitted to him for his information. I am therefore sending this to the newspapers as I feel many of your readers would bring this to his attention.

Ranil must be made aware that ‘gratitude’ is not in the makeup of Prabhakaran, he does not know the meaning of the word. This may be because he is in blinkers and his tunnel vision makes him only see one thing and that is his separate state of Eelam for his people, who have, according to him, been brutalized and suppressed by the racist Sinhalese. He seeks to rid every Sinhalese from his Eelam or at least from the Jaffna peninsula and the British carved Northern Province. As we are all aware to make his Eelam viable he seeks to indulge in a land grab and annex the Eastern Province which was till 1815 a part of the Kandyan Kingdom with its strategic Trincomalee harbour.

You must know that whatever you may do to appease Prabhakaran, or even if you save his life, he would not think twice about having you assassinated. Just think, no one did more for him than President Premadasa. He sent away the IPKF which had cornered him and confined him to a small area of Mullaitivu; they would have finished off the job only if the government had withdrawn the Concurrent List in the 13th Amendment and made a reality of the devolution contemplated in that Amendment to the Constitution; The Tamils of Tamil Nadu would have been appeased that the grievances of their Tamil brethren had been addressed and equality secured for them, justifying the intervention and the loss of life in this country. Yes, Prabhakaran was indeed saved by Premadasa.

Premadasa also had Mathywathani and their two children brought from Norway; he united Prabhakaran with his family.Neville Jayaweera then Ambassador in Sweden would tell you of how he accomplished that. That was not all, the Indians will tell you of the hundreds of thousands of US Dollars worth of arms that were gifted to the LTTE. You may perhaps have known of that. Was the LTTE grateful? NO, they considered us to be suckers.

The naive President, even after he was tricked by the LTTE into agreeing to surrender the east and the 640 policemen, who the LTTE murdered in cold blood after they had surrendered on his orders executed through the then IG, (Premadasa could have called for an international inquiry, but the man was not interested) and the attack on the Palaly Airport when his Foreign Minister had a narrow escape, he wanted to sue for peace once again, I wonder what Prabhakaran would have had to say to that? Anyway what form did their gratitude for what he did for them take? They assassinated him by activating a sleeper whom they had kept in readiness in a LTTE funded kiosk in front of his residence. So Mr. Wickremesinghe, have the police run a check on all those who have infiltrated your establishment over the past ten years including the Sinhalese and others.

Besides President Pemadasa we had another naïve and starry-eyed inexperienced politician who had empathy with the under-dog. She was of course Chandrika Kumaratunga. It must be said to her credit that she was the only Sinhala politician who sincerely believed that the genuine grievances of the Tamil people must be addressed.

The starry-eyed liberal having manned the barricades in the student revolt in Paris, arrived here 20 years after the ethnic problem had first erupted and had now been transformed into war. Most unfortunately, because of the politicization of our institutions and her own attitude, she had no access to what had happened before she took office; she did not have access to files, I wonder whether she studied the intelligence reports or clipping files. I doubt as to whether she was given a comprehensive report on Prabhakaran, his local organization and his international network. The clueless people who were appointed by her to high office and the unstructured manner in which she set about her work did not make her task easier. Her so-called negotiators were hopeless misfits, the strategy of dealing with the LTTE was utterly amateurish.

They did not know the organization they were dealing with and had not done their home-work either. She did not bring in the international community, not even India and the LTTE lost its patience and attempted to assassinate her to make way for you the second time around.

There was nothing she could achieve on the peace front though she did most sincerely try by introducing legislation to meet the grievances of the Tamil people to enable them to live in dignity, security and to decide on their own destiny in areas inhabited by them.

Legislation was brought in 1995, 1997 and finally in August 2000 all of which you successfully sabotaged. You must surely be embarrassed at what you allowed to happen that day when your President and mine, whether we like her or not, was referred to in unprintable language and one of your louts burned the Bill in the House. The LTTE has not forgotten your contribution to the Tamil cause during that period.

In the period before you won the Parliamentary election, your critics state that you delivered the Vanni to the LTTE in order to embarrass her. When you became Premier the LTTE was, with the help of the Norwegians, able to extract the maximum possible concessions from your government starting with the CFA.
Today, the LTTE is at least five times stronger than they were at the time of the Ceasefire; they have annihilated our Intelligence Corps with impunity.

The LTTE were able to obtain advanced communication equipment. We do not here wish to go into all that happened but do you even for a moment think that Prabhakaran is grateful for what he has received. The policy of appeasement which you and some of your ‘gentle’ officials followed naively, did not appease the LTTE neither did it win any friendships it only strengthened the LTTE. My information is that they laugh when asked whether they are grateful for the ‘assistance’ they received. They have no respect for those who helped them, they only scorn the fools.

Now you both are friends and appear to have joined hand to defeat a ‘common enemy’. But the country is more important to us. The only favour the LTTE has done ever is also done in their own interest. They know very well that if they endorse your candidature you would be finished but make no mistake they will demand the payoff.

So what should you do not only to protect yourself but also this country? This country cannot afford another political assassination. You should immediately on assuming office, (if you win the election of course), undertake working visits to India and the US. And request of the two governments the following:-

(1) The two governments should jointly and severally issue a final warning to the LTTE that if any harm comes to you or they indulge in one single assassination of a political leader, they would be held responsible whatever they may say.

(2) The US to station an Aircraft Carrier in the Trincomalee harbour as a warning to the LTTE. India would not join for political reasons, but they would not object for they now have a strategic partnership agreement with the US.

This would not only ensure your own security and that of your senior Ministers but would also ensure a just settlement of the conflict.

That my friend, ‘Singhe’ is your only insurance against assassination for their demands would exceed what you can deliver and we know the form their punishment takes.

Good luck to you. (H.E.W.)

http://www.dailymirror.lk/2005/11/07/opinion.asp