It is reported that UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake, MP and Assistant Secretary Dr. Jayalath Jayawardena, are due in Los Angeles , USA next week on an image boosting visit. Apparently the visit to explain matters to the Srti Lankan expatriates in LA has been prompted by constant negative media publicity resulting from inane comments made by Ranil Wickremnesinghe and Lakshman Kiriella. Among these were, "We dare you to attack Kilinochchi," Thoppigala is a jungle," and" any donkey can wage a war." This last comment made the commentator himself look a donkey!
What these donkeys do not realize is that unless they resign from politics the UNP will never extricate itself from the political mire it is in.
Ranil has turned UNP politics into a first class comedy. But the biggest clowns in it are those who are still loyal to him – both within and outside the party. Their reaction to the government's victory in the crucial vote on the third reading of the budget, reminds us of the eye-specialist who said that a patient's eye could not be cured. In that story by French Philosopher Voltaire, the physician even foretold the day and hour the patient would lose his eye sight. However when the latter somehow regained his eye-sight, the 'eye specialist' wrote a thesis to 'prove' that it was impossible and that it ought not to have healed according to his medical knowledge!
He announced that when the UNP comes to power it will renege on the repayment of some government loans. An outstanding characteristic of Sri Lanka's dealings with creditors is that it has never fallen down on debt repayment.
Then he said that when the UNP came to power business leaders who are 'exploiters' of the people and belonging to certain Chambers of Commerce will be exiled to Somalia which is the nearest he could think of, as 'apaya' or hell. He also said that the HSBC would be packed off to Hong Kong and Shanghai .
Not stopping there he went on to attack journalists saying that they are biased and partisan towards the 'Government of the Rajapaksa brothers.'
Business chambers, the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka the National Chamber of Small Industries and the SAARC Chamber of Commerce all condemned Ranil's wild accusations.
When Ranil was asked to resign from the party leadership he resigned from the Gangarama dayaka sabha. A wag says that RW has now reached a mental state where is no desire for power and position and that is why he resigned from the dayaka sabha. He is a now a Sovan. When he becomes an arahat he will resign from the UNP leadership.
One political observer noted:
"He is mad. He is throwing stones wildly. Like monkeys who will throw anything they had get hold of. He does not bother to find out what he is throwing and how much damage it will cause. Injuring his nose because he is angry with the face"
The UNP is in this mess today because Wickremesinghe has dragged his party into the sterile politics of anti-national alliances, programmes and constitutional formulas. Ranil today is in the same predicament as Sir John Kotalawala was in 1956.
The UNP leader pontificates on issues on which he or his party has no moral right to comment. He talks of media freedom, abductions and human rights. Did any of these exist when in 1988-89 people were dragged out of their and shot or abducted and killed or when bodies were publicly burnt on tyre pyres? Was there recourse to legal action against such brutality? What was the media freedom that existed under the Premadasa regime (in which Ranil was PM) when all television channels were ordered to carry the same news bulletin? Were the killers of Richard de Zoysa apprehended and brought to justice by the UNP regime?
Where were those NGOs and INGOs and UN agencies that are now screaming from the roof tops about human rights violations in Sri Lanka?
And yet Ranil has the nerve to get the International Democratic Union's Executive Committee to unanimously adopt a resolution expressing its full support to his party's "efforts to restore democratic rights in their country, condemning the continuing violation of human rights and failure to uphold democratic standards by the regime in Sri Lanka!."
Has he at anytime called Prabhakaran a ruthless bloodthirsty terrorist and a tyrant? Never. And we can safely bet that he will never do so even in the future. But he has all the guts to condemn the Rajapaksas and the JHU who have participated in Parliamentary democracy. His one aim now is to form an alliance even with the devil to defeat the Rajapaksa regime. That is all what matters to him.
No Asian leader with any self-respect or national pride would think even in his wildest dreams of celebrating the anniversary of his country coming under European colonial domination. But that is exactly what Ranil planned to do in 2005 to mark the 500 th anniversary of the Portuguese encounter in Sri Lanka. Fortunately for us he was thrown out of power in 2004.
Small wonder that patriots call him a modern-day Don Juan Dharmapala
If Ranil had been India's Prime Minister in 1961 he would have never ordered the Indian armed forces to kick the Portuguese colonialists out of Goa. He is such a pathetic bootlicker of the West that he would have then parroted what the U.S. and other Western leaders said at the time – that chasing the Portuguese out of Goa by military means would be "against Gandhian principles of ahimsa (non-violence)!"
With political nincompoops like him leading the Opposition it is hardly surprising that the Chilcotts and the Blakes are poking their noses into our national affairs and blackmailing us.
The Opposition leader's repeated scream for foreign intervention, displeasure expressed on the victory achieved by the armed forces against the LTTE terrorists in the East and condemning the JHU monks indicated the extent of frustration he was undergoing.
Now he is maintaining a deafening silence on what his policy on the ongoing military operations will be if his party ever comes to power. Ranil's ground for signing the MOU with Prabhakaran in 2002 exposes his mentality – appeasing the enemy in the name of peace. Ranil's UNP repeating the Mangala-Sripathi allegations of the Tigers being bribed by the UPFA before the Presidential Election 2005 is a futile attempt to hoodwink the masses on the real reasons for Prabhakaran to prevent the Wanni Tamils from voting at the election.
The first reason is that if Ranil had been elected President, the Western Powers (with all their might behind the UNP) would have forced the 'Sun God' to accept a federal 'solution,' which is not what he wants. Right from the start of Prabhakaran's separatist terror campaign he has had but one aim – the creation of a separate Tamil State . So he imagined that if Mahinda Rajapaksa (with his stance on a unitary state) were to become President he would be a weak ruler with little international support that it would smooth sailing for the LTTE towards the so-called Tamil Eelam.
British terrorism expert and journalist Paul Harris recalls:
`` Asked about the statement he once made to the effect that his cadres would shoot him if he ever renounced Eelam, Prabhakaran smiled, glanced at his heavily armed bodyguards and observed `that statement still holds."
The second reason for obstructing Tamil voters is that if the people in the LTTE-ruled Wanni been allowed to vote the true figures of the population there would have been revealed. It would have proved to the world that the majority of Tamils in Sri Lanka live outside the Tiger-dominated areas. It would have been clear evidence that the majority of Tamils do not consider the LTTE as their sole representative.
Ranil talks of democracy. But is their democracy within his party? Do members have the freedom and power to oust him if they want to?
Said UNP reformist MP and deputy minister of fisheries Neomal Perera (in an interview with C.A. Chandraprema in the Island):
"In the UNP, the leader decides and the working committee rubber stamps it and that is the judgment. Working committee members are treated like puppets. Some do get up and state their point of view. But once they realize that there is no point in saying what they have to say, after a few meetings, they keep quiet. The federalist line was adopted to capture the Tamil vote and to win over the international community. But the party has seen fit to drop the federalist line in view of the achievements of the security forces. The UNP is now concentrating on the 80 percent Sinhalese and not on the 15 percent Tamils."
This is the same Ranil who earlier assured TNA Leader R.Sampanthan of the UNP's fullest support to merge the Northern and Eastern provinces if the issue came before Parliament. The Opposition Leader said this not long after the Supreme Court de-merged the two provinces citing the procedure adopted in merging the two provinces under the Indo-Lanka agreement is questionable.
It is high time that Ranil's supporters thought of getting their heads examined.
What these donkeys do not realize is that unless they resign from politics the UNP will never extricate itself from the political mire it is in.
Ranil has turned UNP politics into a first class comedy. But the biggest clowns in it are those who are still loyal to him – both within and outside the party. Their reaction to the government's victory in the crucial vote on the third reading of the budget, reminds us of the eye-specialist who said that a patient's eye could not be cured. In that story by French Philosopher Voltaire, the physician even foretold the day and hour the patient would lose his eye sight. However when the latter somehow regained his eye-sight, the 'eye specialist' wrote a thesis to 'prove' that it was impossible and that it ought not to have healed according to his medical knowledge!
He announced that when the UNP comes to power it will renege on the repayment of some government loans. An outstanding characteristic of Sri Lanka's dealings with creditors is that it has never fallen down on debt repayment.
Then he said that when the UNP came to power business leaders who are 'exploiters' of the people and belonging to certain Chambers of Commerce will be exiled to Somalia which is the nearest he could think of, as 'apaya' or hell. He also said that the HSBC would be packed off to Hong Kong and Shanghai .
Not stopping there he went on to attack journalists saying that they are biased and partisan towards the 'Government of the Rajapaksa brothers.'
Business chambers, the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka the National Chamber of Small Industries and the SAARC Chamber of Commerce all condemned Ranil's wild accusations.
When Ranil was asked to resign from the party leadership he resigned from the Gangarama dayaka sabha. A wag says that RW has now reached a mental state where is no desire for power and position and that is why he resigned from the dayaka sabha. He is a now a Sovan. When he becomes an arahat he will resign from the UNP leadership.
One political observer noted:
"He is mad. He is throwing stones wildly. Like monkeys who will throw anything they had get hold of. He does not bother to find out what he is throwing and how much damage it will cause. Injuring his nose because he is angry with the face"
The UNP is in this mess today because Wickremesinghe has dragged his party into the sterile politics of anti-national alliances, programmes and constitutional formulas. Ranil today is in the same predicament as Sir John Kotalawala was in 1956.
The UNP leader pontificates on issues on which he or his party has no moral right to comment. He talks of media freedom, abductions and human rights. Did any of these exist when in 1988-89 people were dragged out of their and shot or abducted and killed or when bodies were publicly burnt on tyre pyres? Was there recourse to legal action against such brutality? What was the media freedom that existed under the Premadasa regime (in which Ranil was PM) when all television channels were ordered to carry the same news bulletin? Were the killers of Richard de Zoysa apprehended and brought to justice by the UNP regime?
Where were those NGOs and INGOs and UN agencies that are now screaming from the roof tops about human rights violations in Sri Lanka?
And yet Ranil has the nerve to get the International Democratic Union's Executive Committee to unanimously adopt a resolution expressing its full support to his party's "efforts to restore democratic rights in their country, condemning the continuing violation of human rights and failure to uphold democratic standards by the regime in Sri Lanka!."
Has he at anytime called Prabhakaran a ruthless bloodthirsty terrorist and a tyrant? Never. And we can safely bet that he will never do so even in the future. But he has all the guts to condemn the Rajapaksas and the JHU who have participated in Parliamentary democracy. His one aim now is to form an alliance even with the devil to defeat the Rajapaksa regime. That is all what matters to him.
No Asian leader with any self-respect or national pride would think even in his wildest dreams of celebrating the anniversary of his country coming under European colonial domination. But that is exactly what Ranil planned to do in 2005 to mark the 500 th anniversary of the Portuguese encounter in Sri Lanka. Fortunately for us he was thrown out of power in 2004.
Small wonder that patriots call him a modern-day Don Juan Dharmapala
If Ranil had been India's Prime Minister in 1961 he would have never ordered the Indian armed forces to kick the Portuguese colonialists out of Goa. He is such a pathetic bootlicker of the West that he would have then parroted what the U.S. and other Western leaders said at the time – that chasing the Portuguese out of Goa by military means would be "against Gandhian principles of ahimsa (non-violence)!"
With political nincompoops like him leading the Opposition it is hardly surprising that the Chilcotts and the Blakes are poking their noses into our national affairs and blackmailing us.
The Opposition leader's repeated scream for foreign intervention, displeasure expressed on the victory achieved by the armed forces against the LTTE terrorists in the East and condemning the JHU monks indicated the extent of frustration he was undergoing.
Now he is maintaining a deafening silence on what his policy on the ongoing military operations will be if his party ever comes to power. Ranil's ground for signing the MOU with Prabhakaran in 2002 exposes his mentality – appeasing the enemy in the name of peace. Ranil's UNP repeating the Mangala-Sripathi allegations of the Tigers being bribed by the UPFA before the Presidential Election 2005 is a futile attempt to hoodwink the masses on the real reasons for Prabhakaran to prevent the Wanni Tamils from voting at the election.
The first reason is that if Ranil had been elected President, the Western Powers (with all their might behind the UNP) would have forced the 'Sun God' to accept a federal 'solution,' which is not what he wants. Right from the start of Prabhakaran's separatist terror campaign he has had but one aim – the creation of a separate Tamil State . So he imagined that if Mahinda Rajapaksa (with his stance on a unitary state) were to become President he would be a weak ruler with little international support that it would smooth sailing for the LTTE towards the so-called Tamil Eelam.
British terrorism expert and journalist Paul Harris recalls:
`` Asked about the statement he once made to the effect that his cadres would shoot him if he ever renounced Eelam, Prabhakaran smiled, glanced at his heavily armed bodyguards and observed `that statement still holds."
The second reason for obstructing Tamil voters is that if the people in the LTTE-ruled Wanni been allowed to vote the true figures of the population there would have been revealed. It would have proved to the world that the majority of Tamils in Sri Lanka live outside the Tiger-dominated areas. It would have been clear evidence that the majority of Tamils do not consider the LTTE as their sole representative.
Ranil talks of democracy. But is their democracy within his party? Do members have the freedom and power to oust him if they want to?
Said UNP reformist MP and deputy minister of fisheries Neomal Perera (in an interview with C.A. Chandraprema in the Island):
"In the UNP, the leader decides and the working committee rubber stamps it and that is the judgment. Working committee members are treated like puppets. Some do get up and state their point of view. But once they realize that there is no point in saying what they have to say, after a few meetings, they keep quiet. The federalist line was adopted to capture the Tamil vote and to win over the international community. But the party has seen fit to drop the federalist line in view of the achievements of the security forces. The UNP is now concentrating on the 80 percent Sinhalese and not on the 15 percent Tamils."
This is the same Ranil who earlier assured TNA Leader R.Sampanthan of the UNP's fullest support to merge the Northern and Eastern provinces if the issue came before Parliament. The Opposition Leader said this not long after the Supreme Court de-merged the two provinces citing the procedure adopted in merging the two provinces under the Indo-Lanka agreement is questionable.
It is high time that Ranil's supporters thought of getting their heads examined.
