Have You Ever Heard Of A King Dutugemunu Who Put The Ten Great Warriors Into Jail?
Hema Senanayake
We the people have a great human quality. It is imbedded into our mind. That important quality is sympathy. It is this quality of sympathy which leads you to offer money or food to a panhandler. Sympathy is a wonderful feeling. Some people abuse the sympathy of others.
In the coming presidential election it seems that the government is going to exploit the peoples’ sympathy to the highest possible level. How do they do it? They say, “If the president Rajapkasa is defeated, the Tamil diaspora is hatching an international conspiracy to take him before the International War Tribunal by April 2015.” They further insist that the common candidate of the opposition is aiding and abetting this conspiracy. Why do they say this?
Not because it is true, but because they want to exploit the peoples’ sympathy shamelessly. This seems to be the government’s main strategy in the political campaign. If the above allegation is true, no president would declare an election while having two more years to serve before expiration of his current term. The government wants win or more correctly abuse the sympathy of people. On the contrary the opposition candidate wants to launch a campaign on policy issues. In this regard his policy on war heroes is clear.
You do not want any of the war heroes to be charged before any court no matter whether it is national or international tribunal. You feel that way because you want to be grateful for the service they have done for the country. But it seems that the president Mahinda Rajapaksa did not have that much of gratefulness or he does not have it now. If any recent war hero was punished by any court, then it was done not by an International War Tribunal but by a War Tribunal set up by the president himself. The whole country believes that the president or somebody in the administration fixed Sarath Fonseka so as to be punished and put him into jail.
