TNA Is Cheating, Mahinda A Man Of Good Calibre To Solve The Tamil Problem- KP
September 19, 2013
Former Chief Arms procurer for the Tamil Tigers Kumaran Pathmanathan yesterday expressed fullest confidence in President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ability to resolve the problem of SrI Lanka’s minority Tamils.
Kumaran Pathmanathan
Calling the President ‘a great leader’ the former rebel leader said the government could resolve Tamil issues without the help of the international community.
Pathmanathan said the President was a man of good calibre to solve the Tamil problem.
Hitting out hard against the TNA KP said the main Tamil party that is expected to win Saturday’s provincial poll was cheating the northern people. “You have to work with the majority community that is the only way,” the former LTTE member.
Attacking the LTTE Pathmanathan said both the TNA and the Tigers were always rejecting overtures by the Government. He urged the TNA to join the latest PSC on a final solution.
It was KP’s first press address since his capture. The briefing for the journalists who had been escorted to the north by the army last morning took place at 12 noon at the Sencholai orphanage now run by KP.
No Tiger Symbolism, No Troop Withdrawal
By Dayan Jayatilleka -September 18, 2013 |
Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
The men of the Sri Lankan armed forces did not die, lose their limbs, their eyesight, their futures, so that the fascist separatist Prabhakaran could be openly hailed as a great hero, his photographs distributed, his songs sung and his organization sanitised in the same battlefields. The revivalism that we have seen in the past weeks could, among other things, trigger a backlash that may initially be subterranean but has far reaching political and systemic consequences.
Jaffna’s Uthayan newspaper, as cited in the political column of the Sunday Times, (Colombo) quotes TNA’s chief ministerial candidate as having said:
“Prabhakaran is not a terrorist. He is a hero and a warrior who fought for the liberation of the Tamil nation. A Sinhala newspaper that interviewed me recently, quoted me saying that I had said Prabhakaran is a terrorist. I told them Prabhakaran is not a terrorist and that he is a great hero. It is the angle from which we look at, that makes the estimation of the person. In my view he is not a terrorist. In Kandy, Keppetipola Dissawe who fought against the whites was declared as a terrorist and punished, but now the Sinhalese have installed a statue and celebrate him as a hero. Once viewed by the Whites as a terrorist, was later declared a hero and warrior. It is in the same manner, Prabhakaran is seen to me as a liberation fighter…” (‘Showpiece Development in North but TNA victory inevitable’, Sunday Times, Sept 15, 2013)
As far as I recall, Keppitipola didn’t murder anyone on the side of the anti-imperialist resistance while the ‘Great Hero’ Prabhakaran slaughtered pretty much the whole leadership of the TNA’s constituent parties—Amirthalingam, Yogeswaran, Mrs Yogeswaran, Neelan Tiruchelvam, Sri Sabaratnam, K Pathmanabha—as well as the former Prime Minister of the world’s most populous democracy, and the grandson of Shri Jawaharlal Nehru! Some ‘Great Hero’ that.
