“Prabhakaran has also ceased to the solution. Instead he has become the problem. No solution can be worked out as long as he is in command. He has become the messenger of death and not hope. The time has come for the Tamil people to decide whether they’ve had enough deaths or do they want more? No sensible Tamil who have gone through these harrowing years will want to live under the enormous pressures of uncertainty, suffering, destruction and deaths.”
Editorial - Uthayam Australia
(September 28, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) AS, I write this Government forces are closing in on the last bit of territory held by the LTTE in the Vanni. Everyone was expecting the LTTE to pull a rabbit out of their hat and turn the tide. Other than throwing a few canisters of CS gas they have not produced anything to prove that they can fight the Sri Lankan forces. There is hardly time left either for the LTTE to inspire confidence among the cadres to keep on fighting. The last remaining cadres can fight but for what? The advance of the Sri Lankan forces has driven the last nail into Prabhakaran’s promised Eelam. It is now clear that the last battles are fought to protect Prabhakaran and his status and not the Tamil people trapped in a losing war. All reports indicate that the LTTE, apart from losing territory, has lost manpower and firepower. They have now lost even the prestige they had by holding on to territory. The LTTE can no longer boast that they are running a de facto state.
The LTTE, of course, has the capacity to fight. But that is not the issue. The issue is to ask what they can achieve, or hope to achieve by fighting. They no longer pose the threat they did when they claimed to have parity of status with the government. They have lost all what they gained by signing the Ceasefire Agreement which they tore up hoping to get more. There is no one to blame for the present plight except the LTTE leadership, its advisers and the Tamils in the diaspora who had dumped millions into a useless cause.
IN a desperate bid the LTTE is turning to the diaspora. The diaspora, on the other hand, was banking on the LTTE to keep on winning militarily. Now they are feeling useless. They have nothing to show for the millions they poured into the Tamil war chest. Their money is useful still but only to construct more graveyards. The LTTE too has nowhere to go except into more graveyards. The tragedy facing the Tamils is that after fighting for 30-odd years we have nothing to show except graveyards. Our people have no proper food, clothing, shelter or water. Our people driven from place to place have no rest. No security. Nor the basic freedoms to live with dignity.
At last the time has come for us to go through an agonizing reappraisal of our condition. At last now we must have the courage to admit that we were wrong. We must admit that we took the wrong path. We must apologise to our people for misleading them into taking up arms. We must recognize now that the only way to save our people is to abandon arms and to sue for peace, if the leadership of the LTTE has a positive answer they must tell the people how they can win with arms or what can be done. Their only answer comes out of the mouths of guns. The Tamil people have heard that and are tired of it. Above all, they know that guns are not going to deliver them the goal promised by their misguided leaders. We exaggerated our power to change the world. We were told that we had changed the world when we killed Rajiv Gandhi, when we killed Sri Sabaratnam and Pathmanaba , when we killed Amirthalingam, Neelan Tiruchelvam and our entire Tamil leadership.
But what is left for the Tamils now? We have a leadership that cannot step into the world because they are banned. We have a leadership that cannot step out of their house because they are hunted by their enemies, some of whom are among our own people. We have a leadership that cannot give a piece of bread, a grain of rice or a drop of medicine to our people. Our leadership depends for the basic essentials on “Sinhala- government”. If we cannot win militarily, if all our strategies have ended in losing everything we had, if we are nowhere near our Eelam, if the money we donate go to more deaths and destruction of our people with no end in sight, if we are still dependent for everything on the “Sinhala -government” which we have blamed from day one then what are the options available to us?
The last hope of the LTTE is the Tamil diaspora. The future of the Tamil –people is also in the hands of diaspora. It is no longer in the hands of the LTTE. The toothless Tigers have lost not only power but also lost the respect of the world. The LTTE had never fallen to this level before. Nor is there any sign of LTTE rising from this level to the previous high levels. There is no hope for any political entity that has lost the respect of the international community. We delude ourselves when we get one or two parliamentarians to raise a question or two in Western parliaments. But what good has these question done to the cause of Prabhakaran’s Eelam? The Western powers that matter have banned us. And the more violence we fund the more it is going to kill and destroy our people and bring down the image of the LTTE in the eyes of the international community. The fact is that the LTTE has run out of solutions. Violence is not going to be solution any longer. IN fact, it is going to be the problem.
Prabhakaran has also ceased to the solution. Instead he has become the problem. No solution can be worked out as long as he is in command. He has become the messenger of death and not hope. The time has come for the Tamil people to decide whether they’ve had enough deaths or do they want more? No sensible Tamil who have gone through these harrowing years will want to live under the enormous pressures of uncertainty, suffering, destruction and deaths.
Since the LTTE leadership has not viable solution to end what they began they must take the Tamil people into their confidence and tell them what they can achieve realistically in the present circumstances. If they have no positive answer then they must find a new leader who can lead the people in a new direction. By all accounts, it is clear that Prabhakaran has passed his use-by-date. He has nothing new to offer except death and destruction. Our Tamil people have had enough of it. They must find a new leader who will bring them back to their senses and lead them to peace security and prosperity.
What is at stake is not the future of Prabhakaran but the future of the Tamil people. He is no longer relevant to the Tamil question. He has done his best and his worst. He has now left the Tamils in a situation that no Tamil had experienced ever before. They now do not have the glory of the past in which they held their heads high nor the hope of a new world. The longer Prabhakaran continues in the saddle the more will be the despair of the Tamils. He must go – and he must go NOW for the sake of Tamils. If he doesn’t go then it is up to those in the hierarchy to make him go. He has humiliated the Tamil people enough with his false promises. Our people have a future only in a world where there are no false prophets like Prabhakaran. To rely on Prabhakaran is like the lamb relying on the tigers to save their future. - Sri Lanka Guardian
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