- Is it any wonder President Mahinda Rajapakse who should have been flying a kite on the Dondra sands and not an airline, is able to have a cabinet of over hundred henchmen without a murmur of opposition from the people of Sri Lanka? Will not the UNP do the same now that precedence has been created and they too have such number of people who would want to be ministers and go flying around; equally go fleecing the people around too?_____________________
by Victor Karunairajan
Let us remember Velupillai Kandasamy of the Government Clerical Service Union and why he gave his life on June 5, 1947 and not be carried away by fun and frolic demonstration as proposed by the UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanyake. What is involved here is serious business of impressing on the Government of President Mahinda Rajapakse that people matter and not political cronies, creeps and sycophants and their infatuation with corrupt practices. Demonstrate by all means if you want but this is serious business and is there anyone or even a handful in the UNP camp that would have the courage of Velupillai Kandasamy to dare the powers of the state? On June 3, let Tissa Attanayake and his followers also challenge the racial bigots of the country and recover the Kandasamy monument for what it was erected in 1947. Racial and religious bigotry is at the very root of Sri Lanka's nightmare today.
(May 30, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) On the heels of Minister Bandula Gunawardena’s political puberty, we now have the utterance of the UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake on the same issue but holding the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse to the current crisis of the perennial phase of nightmare in the country.
The entire oily business is wholly and downright slippery, just as this government, every previous governments of post-independent Sri Lanka have found cause to blame foreign market fluctuations when we could have become self-dependent on many fronts of economic activity.
This kind of economic activity would have benefited the people at the grass roots, the very large majority of them and not the elite folks of the capital whose fortunes have been tuned to overseas links, trade and commerce and in recent times, to the world dominated by arms dealers, oil merchants and multi-national corporations operating on highly questionable foundations.
If President Mahinda Rajapakse is guilty of what could be regarded as the political power of profligate prodigality, the UNP of Tissa Attanayake is just as guilty of mismanagement of the country’s affairs. A political prism of events in Sri Lanka over a period of fifty years will reveal the glaring gaudy and horrid colours of corruption, incompetence and how the various governments whipped up the mean and deadly elements of racial and religious bigotry and set the nation on the embers of an awesome ethnic conflagration.
Now this racial discord has become the major industry in the country and if the politicians want to continue thriving on it, they have to maintain the same to earn dividends from it. Commissions from arms imports, contracts on projects that are required to keep the arms active in various forms and the several avenues such open out are all necessary for the corrupt to thrive.
Furthermore, the powers of extra civil laws that enable the police and the forces to keep the populace under watch and control in a state of constant fear, even take actions against them ignoring their fundamental rights add to the might of the politicians to carry on their dark deeds they determine in their own curved and crooked ways.
Is it any wonder President Mahinda Rajapakse who should have been flying a kite on the Dondra sands and not an airline, is able to have a cabinet of over hundred henchmen without a murmur of opposition from the people of Sri Lanka? Will not the UNP do the same now that precedence has been created and they too have such number of people who would want to be ministers and go flying around; equally go fleecing the people around too?
Now Tissa Attanayake wants a demonstration on June 3, something like a public expression of honking the horns and stay put for five minutes wherever one is and then go home patting each other for having participated in a demonstration.
Sixty one years ago almost to the date Tissa Attanayake has planned his 5-minute demo on behalf of the UNP as voicing the sentiments of the people, the Government Clerical Service Union took a brave stand against the government of the time and demonstrated in full force to deliver their message effectively. On that day, June 5, 1947 we lost a brave son, Velupillai Kandasamy a young man from Vaddukoddai to the bullets of the oppressor. But he did not die in vain.
A memorial was erected for him near where he fell to inspire the nation of the power of union and collective action. But sadly, this monument has been replaced to serve the whims and fancies of racially and religiously bigoted political power seekers of Sri Lanka.
If the UNP of Tissa Attanayake mean business let the June 3 demonstration begin where Velupillai Kandasamy fell and recover it to the original intention and then march the streets of Colombo, if necessary as a new addition to placards flying Mihin Kites and impress on the government to set to the business of serving the terribly devastated people of Sri Lanka and not the corrupt elements that have bred like wild hares in the country.
I do not think Sri Lanka can afford or bear to see demonstrations like tooting the horns and honking any more. Such are for big match celebrations and light-hearted fun and frolics.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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