Rajapaksa Rides The Lion Again
By Kumar David -September 29, 2013 |
Prof Kumar David
The utterance of a voice long suppressed
No doubt about it, cerulean has trumped viridescent, again, in the Sinhala heartland, the blues even comfortably winning Kandy District which the greens had hoped to bag. In the Tamil north, Rajapakse and his factotum Douglas have been given the thrashing of their lives in a TNA landslide like never before in our electoral history – over 80% of the vote. The Tamils have in an emotional sense affirmed war crimes accusations, they have also rejected the Sinhala State; there is no other interpretation for this result. Of course this is not a tribunal, but it is of political significance. There is a dangerous bifurcation of the country which will not diminish till the Gota-Mahinda regime is driven out. Let’s grow up and get real; there is nothing this regime will not do, if it can get away with it, to sink the new NPC-TNA Administration; the survival of dictatorship is predicated on snuffing out independent power centres. Call me a pessimist if you will; on this topic I am. Nevertheless, I have inserted the caveat, “if it can get away with it”, to concede that until CHOGM is done with, inflicting injury on the NPC will be restrained since Singh, Cameron and Abbot may pull out.
The statement from Navi Pillai’s office said: “We categorically deny the High Commissioner ever uttered a single word about the statue of Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake at any point during her visit to Sri Lanka, let alone asking the President to remove it. This claim is without a shred of truth”. This is beyond belief; extraordinary, unprecedented in global diplomacy. Are certain people of clinically unsound mind? My editor, understandably, cannot publish names if I utter them.
Don’t waste time with semantics like does Thamil Arasu imply a separatist agenda or does anyone have the right to praise Vellupillai Prabaharan in public; pointless discourses initiated by those who are unwilling to look at realities. And reality is, how will the NPC Administration, an occupying military of alien ethnicity, and a crude, cruel and corrupt government, co-exist. The next phase in the political game will be dominated by this imbroglio. If Sinhalese people continue to flock to the Gota-Mahinda agenda, as they seem to be, anything is possible in the coming years, an extreme scenario would be the resurgence of Eelam (meaning separatist) trends among Tamil youth. Paradoxically, Gota may be midwife to that which VP and the LTTE could not deliver.
