United Sri Lanka and Unitary Sri Lanka
N Sathiya Moorthy
Grant it to President Mahinda Rajapaksa to do it 'outsmarting' the adversary as he alone has done in contemporary Sri Lankan history. On the political front, yes, he has made Ranil Wickremesinghe and his own former President and one-time party chief Chandrika Kumaratunga bite dust time and again. More importantly on the ethnic issue, war and violence, LTTE leader Prabhakaran has finally found his match in President Rajapaksa.
It is not only on the war front that the Sri Lankan Government is on the victory-run. Even on PR and psy-wars, the Government has come a close second against the legendary capabilities of the LTTE propaganda machinery. Though not very long ago the President claimed that his Government was no match to the LTTE in such matters, facts prove otherwise.
The reference of course is to the way he turned the tables on the LTTE and the international community at the UN General Assembly. Before his New York visit, the international community was satisfied with charging the Sri Lankan Government with dereliction of duty in relation to the 200,000-plus internally-displaced persons (IDPs) in the war-ridden, Tamil-majority Northern Province. Today, the world acknowledges that the LTTE too should take the blame for holding the IDPs hostage, if not using them as 'human shields' against the Sri Lankan Army's massive strikes.
President Rajapaksa began his UN speech with a few lines in Tamil. It was 'stunt' in the eyes of the minority Tamils back home. But there were those outside the country who saw this as a 'symbolism'. Flowing from his oft-repeated claims to combining his war on terror with a return of peace and equity to the Tamils, it was a further step in the right direction. Already, the President is on record that he would usher in democracy to the North the same way it was done in the East as and when the SLA concluded the war successfully dailymirror.lk |