Thursday, January 15, 2015

Reform Must Coincide With Reason

By Uditha Devapriya -

Uditha Devapriya

January 15, 2015

When Mahinda Rajapaksa won in 2005, I cheered. At a time when “appeasement” had become a magic word, he was needed. When he appointed Sarath Fonseka as head of

the army, I was overjoyed. When he appointed Gotabaya Rajapaksa as his Defence Secretary, I could think of no better person who could hold that post, never mind that he was his brother. The excuse that the former president was to give in later years – that he needed trusted people by his side – gained credence as the years went by, and as the LTTE began its shameless campaign of terrorism and intimidation.

Time passed. 2006 came. A group of stalwarts from the Jathika Hela Urumaya marched to Mavil Aru. Mindsets began to change. The military operation, which had languished owing to a peace accord that did much for separatists and nothing for those who were at the receiving end of their tactics, was regained. In just three years, a war that had lasted more than three decades and 100,000 lives was over. And when that war was over, we all cheered. Some called it triumphalism, others called it unworthy of common decency. Didn’t matter. We cheered.

By Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe -January 15, 2015

Ajit Rupasinghe

Nothing that is to be said here is meant to undermine any real victory gained by the masses in defeating the forces of the darkest reaction in an electoral contest. We shall be committed to defending these gains won by the suffering masses, who simply wished for a breath of oxygen from one of the most hated, despotic dictatorships in our modern political history. The new dispensation has provided the masses with a fervent hope for some democratic freedom from a living hell and a hope that they shall be relieved from their insufferable economic burdens heaped upon them by Mahinda Rajapaksa. There is celebration by all those who desire for a social order, a future and a civilized foundation away from the untrammeled naked, rampant political culture of

deceit, chauvinist-supremacist arrogance, corruption and abuse that Mahinda Rajapaksa epitomized and concentrated. The oppressed masses, including the Sinhala, Tamil and Moslem people in their majority and all progressive forces rejoice in the defeat of a self-serving, dynastic, neo-fascist dictatorship. The Tamil and Moslem oppressed nationalities, in the North-East, Hill Country and throughout the country placed their desperate hope that the new dispensation under Maitripala, promising a government of National Unity, would deliver them from the chauvinist-militarist/ supremacist-hegemonic dictatorship. Only the likes of self-serving pariahs such as Peon Wimalaya, Gestapo SB, Rapist Drug Lord Duminda, Twisted Knickers Keheliya, Predator Killer Douglas and others, the likes of sex-crazed Neanderthals like Ecstasy Namal and Erectile Malaka, the neo-fascist agents such as Gandassara and the blood-sucking parasites of the ilk of Crony Ajith Cabraal, Greasy Jayasundera, Baboon Balasuriya, Lord Mohan, Slimey Sajin shall yearn for a return of the deposed, rotting status-quo. Please excuse the enraged nomenclature.