P C Elections: Ranil mauled trying to debate President on the war

By Philip Fernando in Los Angeles

(April 27, Los Angeles, Sri Lanka Guardian) UNP’s sudden inclination to seek bragging rights for the war got rebuffed by the Westen Province voters on Saturday. The stunning polls debacle Ranil Wickremesinghe suffered put him in the unenviable company of Hillary Clinton, another self-styled peacenik, the perennial goof ball of US politics. Strange bed fellows indeed! Voters reminded Ranil that the CFA hatched by him had fortified the Tigers beyond belief. His challenging the most popular Sri Lankan president since D S Senanayake to a debate was political hara-kiri.

The election campaign was entertaining as Ranil cohorts shun their sinister comments and loathing for the anti-terror war. UNP Chairman Gamini Jayawickrama Perera even predicted dire karmic retribution to Prabhakaran who allegedly denied them the presidency in 2005 getting the Tamils to refrain from voting. Ah! What logic? Obviously, the former CFA adherents are now parading in Emperor’s new clothes. The voters saw it coming. Nakedness is habitually more sublime at times for some leaders.

Having squawked and scurried about trying to cannibalize everyone who opposed the CFA for years, the change in tactics actually failed to produce a victory lap for the UNP. Election results struck like lightening, an over dose of lethal electrical charge hitting the UNP with catastrophic force. The results were a stunning set back, a foregone conclusion.

The UNP lost the moral capacity to talk about the war when revelations of how LTTE had amassed weapons and ammunitions during the Cease-Fire era came to light. There had been no conscientious objectors in the UNP when all these seemingly treasonous acquiescence with a ruthless terrorist and the sworn enemy of the country occurred.

LTTE’s war machine thrived due to the CFA. Deadly war arsenal including 130 mm artillery guns and trailers, T-56 and multi-purpose machine guns (MPMG), hand grenades, over 10 kg. Claymore mines, Bangalore torpedoes and thermo baric weapons arrived by container-loads. Sophisticated broadcasting transmiters were the icing on the LTTE cake. That is part of Ranil’s legacy that could never be expunged from history.

UNP leadership felt resented and bitter as they campaigned with no glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Their anger is somewhat understandable, the die was cast against them. The war on their laps and they were overwhelmed by it. But they remained defiant to an unacceptable level. Their weapon was to gin-up a phony rationale justifying their pious intentions of getting Prabhakaran to act in a sane manner.

Like Hillary Clinton, Ranil seemed to have allowed Prabhakaran to pull wool over their eyes. UNP boasted that suicide bombings would be things of the past after the CFA. Prabhakaran violated the cease-fire with impunity and unerring frequency. No one said a whimper then.

Thus, the UNP’ P C election strategy became a damp squib, nothing but a “pus vedilla.” Their election speeches were full of snarled logic incomprehensible even to their ardent fans. The apologists for the CFA behaved almost as non-convicted traitorous felons suddenly acting like champions of militaristic grandeur.

UNP’s campaign flagship vessel was nothing but a dynamo of cheap political pot shots concocted for the benefit of the gullible. The Western Province elections did not make them national heroes instantaneously. Their past sealed their fate.

What the UNP leaders failed to comprehend was the character of the nation and the stature of those who backed the war to fight terrorism. The moral and social sappers spawned by the valiant effort to defend the country in grave danger did their work. We remained yet a blood-and-soil, family-and-faith, country first kind of nation. There is not even an iota of doubt about it.

Most Sri Lankans remain visceral patriots. It's in their DNA. But the UNP leaders had trouble seeing the excellent manner war was executed. Instead, they got bitter and clung to moth-eaten theories or antipathy to people who aren't like them.

How can UNP leaders listen to the scrub stock of those who trash Sri Lanka and say nothing? Have they forgotten that they also represented the country not just themselves. They are the elected Opposition. But some of them behaved like elected fifth columnists. It was the American singer Merle Haggard who sang, "If you're running' down my country, man, you're walking' on the fighting' side of me."

If the UNP leaders do not wish to lose the country, they had better begin to understand the rest of Sri Lanka. These are the fighters who defended us with their blood and tears and many of them with their lives. It is time for the obnoxious arrogance to end. The pitchfork-wielding xenophobes who disliked those who are not with them must get out of their cages before they got decimated.

A true nation is an extended family. If fathers, sons and daughters do not defend it, it is their conduct that is indefensible. The remarkable victory of the Sri Lankan armed forces against the vicious LTTE was masterly plotted and brilliantly executed. Improved counter–insurgency and massive international surge in wading off misinformation did the trick. Those who down play that effort will inherit wilderness for a long time. PC elections just showed them that.

-Sri Lanka Guardian