CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

No Governments or Political Parties were accused of neglecting the Tamil Community, until communal difference was made evident by separate Political Parties for the Tamil community.

By Charles Perera

All these people who propose a political solution to the terrorist problem in Sri Lanaka, must go to Kilinochchi and meet the terrorist leadership and ask them to halt further armed activity, and instead request the Government of Sri Lanka, to meet them for peace negotiations.

It is really useless staying in Colombo and cry high and law, that further confrontations should be stopped and both parties should enter into peace negotiations. The Government has taken to arms as a last resort as the LTTE never stopped their pistol gangs, grenade lobbing, using snipers, and setting off claymore mines, despite the pot holed CFA of Ranil .

Therefore those at fault for the present “war” situation are the LTTE terrorists. Hence it is to the LTTE terrorists this “peace mongers” should make their appeal to meet the government for negotiation, and not to the government.

Sri Lanka had never treated the minority communities differently. Somewhere in 1930s a left movement came into being. Thereafter, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party led by N.M.Perera, Colvin R De Silva, Leslie Gunawardhane entered into Sri Lanka politics. And it was LSSP for the first time undertook to unite all communities under one banner. Unfortunately, the LSSP was recognised as a workers party, and was not popular among the peasants, that left room for the nationalists to come forward and set up the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

But LSSP did not give up their principle not to seek popularity through nationalist slogans and become the voice of all the people. It contested elections with candidates to all constituencies. But unfortunately the Jaffna let down the LSSP, with returning only one candidate, and that was a mistake of the Tamils trying to trace a path away from the rest of the population.

Thereafter the politics in the North took a very nationalist form, breaking away from other political parties and forming political parties for the Tamils. It is only after that a marked difference between the two political moments of the Sinhala and the Tamil came into being.

Even then the Tamils were not neglected by the majority community, until nationalism became more marked with rivalry between the two communities. It is that rivalry that gave birth to terrorism.

Now the problem is not the difference between the two communities that is in question, but terrorism, that is trying to seal the difference between the different communities.

To avoid this permanent division of the communities that make up the Sri Lankan Nation, firstly the terrorism has to be got rid of. Once that is over then the Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and other communities should sit down to build the Nation from the beginning. There is no point in taking any model constitution, from which to prepare our own constitution. Peaceful negations leaving aside political ambitions, could be a positive means to prepare a constitution of our own which gives equality of chance to all Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Malays.

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