Bodhi Dhanapala Quebec

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe during Chandrika Kumaratunga’s presidency and today as well, has in his many statements on the Easter suicide bombings emphasized the global nature of the problem, and referred to the need for international help..

Given all the US and Western support available to the Prime Minister, didn’t his security network, or the FBI, or the CIA, warn him independently of the messages that Sirisena is supposed to have got, three times over? Isn’t it likely that the Prime Minster who considers himself a great tactician actually GOT the news, and since Sirisena had hogged security, decided to let Sirisena take the blame too?

Now that the Prime Minister has declared that we need international help to resolve this problem, and given his statesman-like approach of holding talks and never becoming a hawk, shouldn’t we hold talks with the ISIS and the NTJ about these bombings, just as we did with Prabhakaran? Wouldn’t this be a policy advocated by political thinkers like Minister Mangala Samaraweera who even inspired Samatha Power to fly into Colombo to felicitate him on his work anniversary?

After all, NTJ has done only ONE day of suicide bombings, while the LTTE did it every other day for many years. Of course, Sri Lankans by themselves are not trusted to hold such talks, as they may succumb to the pressure of bigots like Balagoda Atthe Gnanasara. Fortunately, we locked him up while the Wanathawilluwa owner of the weapons cache was released to ensure ethnic reconciliation.

So, clearly the best approach is to declare a CFA with the ISIS, and get Solheim to meet Al Bagdadi himself, because Erik was a man who got along famously with Prabhakaran and Anton Balasingham. So he will have no problem, given his diplomatic skills, in getting right into the Al Bagdadi’s tent, charm him and get him to sign the CFA. Like the CFA that Eric and Ranil signed with Prabhakaran, the President doesn’t have to even see it. Even Chandrika Kumaratunga, an admirer of Solheimian slickness in peacemaking would love all this and the return of Erik. The Swedes might even give a Nobel prize to the right person, for getting them back on the stage.

Solheim acted for a while as the European Union minster of the environment. So may be Eric S could even get Qatar which funded the building of houses and Mosques in the Wilpattu to demolish those houses and plant trees there – even date tress, as has been done in Kattankudi. Just as we had the TNA becoming the servile political voice of the LTTE, we need to promote the NTJ to act as the spokesman of the ISIS instead of banning it. Furthermore, Eric S and his friends could finance a few more NGOs, say a Centre for Political Advancement. That will be to bridge the gap between the ISIS and the Sinhala Buddhists who should be chastised and weaned of their dangerous “Mahawamsa Mindset”, and their tendency to “triumphalism”.

Or maybe Erik Solheim can convince Wickremesinghe and Sirisena that the only decent thing they can do is to resign from their respective positions and live in the Andaman Islands, scrubbing their hands for ever, of those layers of negligence of duty and guilt, surrounded by the pictures of 300 people dead, and 600 people injured, and the two people who were made to resign as scapegoats. That could have been the slogan of the now canceled May day events.

Bodhi Dhanapala ,