ENDLESS SHAME AND SHAMELESS END

Asoka Perera PhD Toronto

It has been over a year that President Mahinda Rajapakse has been crowned as the head of the state. Ever since he became the president, as other presidents did in the past, he added many pebbles to his crown. He made all necessary arrangements to key positions in the parliament and defense ministry. Obviously, one has to admit that politicians need to cement their position before they start the assault to terrorists. President Mahinda Rajapakse is a veteran politician in this scene as every effort taken by then President Chandrika Kumaratunga to oust him was defeated tactically. He became president with the support of JVP. Then the minority power in the parliament was very successfully converted to majority. He is now powerful enough to carry out his political agenda, Mahinda Chinthanaya, promised during the election campaign.

Mavil Aru incident brought the heavy defeats to eastern tiger regiments. With dedication and careful strategies employed by three forces chased away the eastern tigers to jungles and liberated the east from LTTE hands. Obviously, the role of Karuna factor was instrumental to military successes and detrimental to LTTE defeats. Despite CFA conditions, LTTE provided enough grounds to precede the victory towards the north. We can not blame government forces for not triggering out instant assaults to northern LTTE fronts. Because, for successful military offences need careful planning and strategically implementation. But the government should not let loose the military grip they achieved during past few months.

It was an open secret that LTTE possesses a certain degree of air capacity. The government had enough information and evidences about LTTE airstrips and light aircrafts. They had in the past missile power and used it against SLAF. Our forces have suffered enough in the hands of LTTE missile power. It is very shame to see that a democratically elected government waits to make necessary protection against this baby brigade of LTTE airmen until they destroy the moral of our saviors. One could reasonably ask from the government authorities that why not they use the modern satellite images, GPS network and GIS techniques to locate and target the tiger hideouts. It couldn't be a long term solution every time to make blackouts in the area of attacks to divert air strikes.

Chandrika Kumaratunge assumed duties of the office in 1994 and launched Jayasikuru operation in 1995. It lasted only few months and TLLE regained some strategically important areas later on. Then Chandrika turned into peace talks with GL. Is the present President following the same path as his predecessor? LTTE is desperately in need of doing any damage to south to build up their tarnished image due to military defeats and boost their fund raising campaigns in foreign countries.

The government should carefully analyze and estimate the vast damage occurs to our little and crucial economy due to the heavy propaganda work by LTTE media network. International airlines are reluctant to land in our airports, tourism industry is being affected and foreign governments have already made travel alerts to Sri Lanka. If things continue like this, it would highly be unlikely to think about the existence of this present government beyond the next term. People need long lasting peace and history says it is not peacefully achievable with LTTE. They are not ready to give up arms. It is government's responsibility to disarm LTTE and create an environment to live Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and other communities with peace and harmony. I personally know how some individuals and organizations in Canada worked hard in the past to get this LTTE outfit labeled as a terrorist organization. The situation remains the same for other countries around the world. Sri Lanaka expatriates around the world are shocked with governments silence over the air strikes. We don't want Ranil Wickramasinghe led UNP to get back to power and betray the country to separatists.