'President Rajapaksa has it in his power to reap a peace dividend'-Toronto Star
Editorial by Toronto Star, Feb 1, 2010:
Sri Lanka digs out
In the past 12 months, Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa scored both a decisive military victory and an electoral triumph. But he has yet to truly win the peace.
His re-election victory last week, watched closely by many Tamil Canadians here, was tainted by widespread campaign abuses – notably the lopsided coverage by state media and brazen intimidation of his main rival, former army chief Sarath Fonseka. Even in the aftermath of the vote, which went strongly in Rajapaksa's favour, harassment of Fonseka's campaign continued, with security dragnets, a police raid and arrests.
The European Union and the United States have raised concerns about election irregularities, though early indications are that these would not have altered the outcome of the vote. But that verdict hardly represents a clean bill of health for this troubled country, which desperately needs to change course.
Sri Lanka is often described as a country divided between its Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority, and marked by decades of strife between the army and Tamil Tiger insurgents. But in the wake of the Tigers' defeat last year, vicious new fault lines have grown within the country – pitting Sinhalese against Sinhalese, while traditional tensions with the Tamils endure.
It is hard to fathom how much more conflict the country can withstand – or why it should persist in this path.
Rajapaksa has it in his power to reap a peace dividend as the country demilitarizes by: speeding up the resettlement of the roughly 100,000 ethnic Tamils still in "transit camps" or detention; reviving the political dialogue for a new deal between the Sinhalese and Tamils, built on federalism and devolution so that power is not centralized and monopolized by the majority; and laying the groundwork for a new democratic culture for a country that has held elections without fail but failed to elect leaders who respect the tenets of democracy.
Now would be a good time to start.
To write to the Editor lettertoed@thestar.ca
5 Comments
How about giving visas to these 100,000 displaced tamils live in transit camps to settle down in Canada?
All what the Tamils require is Guarantees offered by political structure that the violence in the past against Tamil will not be allowed in the future.
Violence such as
Encroachment in Tamils land some time it is called as Gerrymandering
Sexual violence against Tamil female kids, young girls, mothers and grand others,
Killing, arbitrary arrest in Tamil for just being Tamils
July 23s
It was not a "victory" at all in the usually accepted sense even in a semi-democracy as the one we are forced to endure. The entire election was "stolen" -
for the 2nd time to be exact. The 1st was in 2005 by the same actors. Its now becoming a habit in a country that has recorded many political firsts. The choice before the Tamil-speaking people - with a voting of strength over 5 million in a total of about 14 million - was whether their choice is the man who want to decimate them or the one who carried out the order - not unsimilar to the Turkey being asked to vote for Christmas. That those Tamil-speaking people in the North East, Colombo District and the Central Hills overwhelmingly voted against President Rajapakse will show its toll on the innocent Tamils in the South in the future. Already, the more undesirable in the majority are showing their anger in no uncertain terms for the minorities voting against their patriotic son. The EU and the USA should have been more forthright in their reservations for the massive frauds considering the arbiter of the event - The Commissioner himself - made pointed references to before he was "forced" to declare the winner. Rigging with ballot boxes and changing stacks of votes in favour of one with the other were reported island-wide. What indeed were the International Monitors doing with all this happening virtually under their nose - other than a polite but well veiled rebuke?
You certainly are on target to state the country is divided between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. That was indeed the political reality until the first colonialists - the Portugese - showed up early 16th century - when the Sinhalese had their separate kingdom in the South and the Tamils theirs in the North-East. It was the British who centralised these - for "administraive convenience" in the lexicon of the Colebrook-Cameron Commission in 1931/33. The Federalist path and devolution of power, that you rightly point out, is the way out of the 60 year old impasse. The problem is Sinhala leaders say these two words are taboo to the Sinhala psyche - and so the blood-bath option. The forthcoming General Election will be one-sided - for the opposition will have hardly the needed resources for the task. The sum total, in so far as the Tamils are concerned, will be the State using its juggernaut to subtly and gradually colonise the North and East making the Tamil majorities in the region to minority demographic status. This process was set in slow-motion in 1948 and accelerated in the past few years - which is one of the main reasons for some of the Tamil youth resortimg to the extra-parliamentary path in the mid-1970s.
If R2P and similar global mechanisms to right political injustices are to be effective and to be taken seriously by rogue regimes, this is one theatre and one regime to test this with. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka joings the ranks of Mugabe's Zimbabwe, the
Myanmar junta of corrupt fascist generals and a whole host of Arab tin pot dictators with their own brand of "democracy" to keep their suffering masses under their heel in a form of "Guided Democracy"
ISS
my advice to that section of the LTTE supporting tamil diaspora is please, either work with all the people of sri-lanka (by this i mean the sinhala, tamil, muslims, malays, burghers who live in sri-lanka and call it their home) to make that country peaceful and prosperous or
if that is not possible for you due to your supporting the LTTE, eelam and other reasons, please leave sri-lanka alone to solve its own problems and for you to focus your attention on the respective countries you have made your home and try to have a good life in those countries instead of bothering sri-lanka all the time for no reason whatsoever.
Monkey:
Over 1.5 million voted for Ranil more than MR in 2005. On Jan 26 the same thing
happened in favour of Sarath Fonseka where Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Malays,
Burghers voted overwhelmingly for him. But the "result" was something else.
Both elections were "stolen" When Tiran Alles was forced to cough out what happened in 2005 his house at Galpottawatta in Nawala was bombed a few weeks ago (he was part of only half of the "robbery" and the amount was much more than Rs.180 million. Tigers don't play games like this for sillara-kasi. My info is it is between Rs500-Rs800 million)We live very much in firm terra and know many in the diaspora also want to come back - to a peaceful and civilised country and not the mess that we see now. The Diaspora will not allow their ancient land to be stolen under any cost - if Vermin and the like have other ideas along this road to which Sarath F too was part.
Any "advise" here.
ISS