Mahinda Rajapaksa Architect Of His Own Misfortunes
By Veluppillai Thangavelu -January 24, 2015
Veluppillai Thangavelu
In an article I wrote in December titled “Majority Of Sinhalese, Tamils And Muslims Are Likely To Deny Third Term To MR“, I claimed that a majority of Sinhalese, Thamils and Muslims are likely to deny a third term to President Mahinda Rajapaksa. This has proved prophetic, albeit, the Sinhalese voters preferred Mahinda Rajapaksa by a narrow margin.
In the same article I predicted” The Thamils will take revenge on Mahinda Rajapaksa like goddess Kannagi for treating them shabbily and robbing them of their self respect and dignity. Thousands of mothers whose children have disappeared after arrest by the armed forces will not vote for Mahinda Rajapaksa. He cannot buy their votes by cheap gimmicks like handing over jewellery, on the eve of an election that rightly belonged to them in the first place” has been proved right.
In Colombo Telegraph there was another article captioned “Mahinda or Maithri? Neutrality the Best Option for the TNA and Thamils” authored by my friend Thambu Kanagasabai. Apparently he is looking at the problem as an academic and not as a politician. There is no difference between boycotting the elections and maintaining neutrality both are revisionist theories too risky to practice. What would have happened if the Thamils boycotted the elections or remained neutral? Rajapaksa would have won the elections and remained in power for another 7 years till 2022. Unfortunately, this was also the stand of BTF, TGTE, ICET, USTPAC and few other Diaspora outfits. Only the GTF asked the people to exercise their franchise carefully, an indirect way of telling the people to vote against Rajapaksa. CTC also came out forcibly asking people to exercise their democratic right to vote.
In a long winding press release the ICET stated “Therefore, regarding the upcoming election, our request is that each Eelam Thamil should act in keeping our long-term goal in mind, and express to the international community a stance based on only the Thamil nation’s existence and security in mind” which ignored the pathetic existence of a majority of our people struggling day to day survival. This was neither fish nor fowl!
