CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

America makes History….. a minority ethnic group rises above past tragedies to be one with the Majority, while the minority ethnic groups in Sri Lanka take distance from the Majority.

By Charles.S.Perera

On the 27 August,2008, America made history in Denver- while our Tamil friends continue their attack against the Sinhala.

The nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for the Presidential election of USA is making history. It goes as a credit to the American people who were able to look above racial difference to unite to nominate a Black American man for the highest post of the Nation. In proposing his nomination President Bill Clinton put it in strong terms that America is not making an example of its power, but the power of its example. CNN Producer Terence Burke says that he saw a weeping black man at the Democratic Convention , and when asked why he weeps, he said that, " You hope, but I never thought I'd see this day come".

It is indeed an example for little nations like ours to set aside our differences and unite for progress and development. We will not be able to rise above our state of under development as long as we hold onto our ethnic problems, putting all our ills to the fact of our communal difference.

America is today not only a leader nation of the world, but also an example to emulate. It has its Bushes, and Blakes, but it also has its Hillarys, and Kennedys. Sri Lanka's political problems could be solved by its people only if they are willing to subordinate their racial identity to rise up to being a nation of a united people.

The Afro Americans had gone through untold misery in the hands of the White Americans. They were massacred, lynched, raped, hanged,burnt alive, made to live in fear of death under the hands of an inhuman Klu Klux Clan There leaders were assassinated. Despite all that humiliation and suffering, they were able surmount them to be a responsible, recognised, and respected people of the American Nation.

But the Tamils unable to surmount the tragedies that affected them hark back to the July 83s, the riots that caused Tamil tragedies, and live continuously brandishing the memories of them, renewing hatred to the majority community.

A Tamil man called Peter Ratnadurai writing to the Sri Lanka Guardian, shamelessly distorts facts misinterpreting situations. Referring to the recent polls he says, "……as the election results show, there are still large sections of the Sinhala community that believe in a military solution to the ethnic conflict".

The military solution is to the terrorism, which this man interprets as the ethnic problem. His mind is so biased he cannot see the difference between the terrorism and the ethnic problem. He continues his Sinhala bashing stating, "If only the Sinhala people were not so fickle, they would remember that, as late as the turn of the century, they heard all the same tough talk; seen all the record-breaking military spending; and partied at the capture of many Tamil towns and cities. Should sanity prevail, they would realise that doing the same thing over and over again, be it on a larger scale, will not produce fundamentally different results."

How can we, with people like this turn tables to the past and look forward to a different future of peace and prosperity. He asks the Sinhala people to learn lessons from the past, without he himself not learning any lessons. They prefer to live with festering sores with maggots in them, taking every opportunity to lash out at the Sinhala people for what they had been, and what they are.

This is the tragedy that had befallen on us. Unless we forget these and turn a new leaf, and begin life afresh we will never dream of one day reaching the political heights reached by the American people.

On the other side we have people like, Mangala Samaraweera, Ranil Wickramasinghe, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Rauf Hakhim, who make us wonder how we would ever progress into being a Nation. One sees in these people the extent of decadence into which we have fallen. They have no ambition for the country, to build itself into a dominant Nation in Asia. We have the potential, but we lack the willingness to contribute to realising this object as a whole, without being a divided people.

American people are either Republicans or Democrats. They have no political parties for Africans, Indians, Chinese, Muslims or Porto Rican. That is how they were able to bury their ethnic difference. Why cannot we be like them- the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people, in political parties that do not identify the ethnic difference ? Would not that be a first step to end the ethnic problem ?

Let us hope that the American People will vote Barack Obama as the President of the United States of America.

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