| by Gajalakshmi Paramasivam
( June 14, 2013, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) I write in response to the Dr. Jayatilleke’s speech to the Citizens Movement for Good Governance published by Sri Lanka Guardian under the title ‘Post War Sri Lanka: Between Expectation & Fulfilment’
Dr. Jayatilleke states ‘Let me venture a banal observation. Most of us in this room -and most people we know- would have been positively disposed about the decisive termination of the war in May 2009. Now the term “positively disposed” covers a continuum from ‘relieved’ to ‘glad’ to ‘happy’. But I also think that most of us in this room and most of the people we know have a sense of disquiet about the present. If we take our minds back to May 2009, I dare say that none of us really expected to be here in this mood 4 years down the road. That is not what we thought things would be like. That’s not what we thought we would feel 4 years later. So there has been an important gap between expectation and fulfillment.
This gap can be super-imposed on yet another gap, that between promise and fulfillment. Sri Lanka’s story or the story of Ceylon is probably that story; the story of the gap between our promise as a country, as a society and the actual outcomes, the actual performance.’
If ‘ most of us’ as expressed by Dr. Jayatilleke are true Sri Lankans – we would not have felt ‘positively disposed’ about the WAY the war was apparently terminated in 2009. We would have been concerned about the victims of that last battle and their future. It is this negligence of responsibility by majority race to include minority race in their thinking as if they were an intrinsic part of themselves that has caused the disappointment and depression. If we did not have it in us to naturally include them as part of us, we ought to have stayed within the boundaries of a structured path that was acceptable to the wider world. We failed to do this. Those who claimed ‘victory’ were making false claims. They were false because internally there can only be disciplinary action and correction and not VICTORY. Those who felt victorious were alienating the Tamil Community and hence are outsiders to the Tamil Community. Their promises would therefore be false. You cheat the minority – you cheat yourself except when you openly limit yourself to your part of the country.
Just yesterday, I wrote as follows in this regard, when preparing for a seminar at the University of Jaffna:
‘I discovered that Emotions without belief lead to judgments based on hearsay dressed up in legal suits. It leads also to imaginary credits to oneself to enjoy ego pleasures. This often leads to hallucination and when leaders hallucinate – the whole group hallucinates. The most vulnerable and at risk of infection are the ones who are dependent on these leaders.’
Given that most victims of the 2009 battle were Tamils – all those who do not include Tamils and their genuine pain as their pain would not have the solution that would include Tamils and prevent future pain. When leaders do not have those natural feelings – they need to use the structured path which has now been raised to the global level – by the Sri Lankan Government which listed the LTTE as terrorists – using the Global process. If the problem is global the solution also needs to be global. Local solutions have now become inadequate. THAT is the gap Dr. Jayatilleke – all due to your hasty listing of LTTE as Terrorists.
 I write in response to the Dr. Jayatilleke’s speech t...){kind=link}