SB to topple MOU – Attacks Mahinda Rajapaksa

By Walter Jayawardhana

The United National Party’s National Organizer S. B. Dissanayaka vehemently attacked President Mahinda Rajapaksa and said the leader was suffering from a war mentality for the military campaigns he wages against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE).

He ridiculed the President and said the head of state was masquerading as Dutugemunu and Parakramabahu , two kings during the periods of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa kingdoms, who brought the country under one rule defeating foreign invasions and divisions.

Dissanayaka was pardoned , only months ago, by President Mahinda Rajapaksa while he was languishing in a prison spending a jail term of two yers RI for contempt of court.

The former Ministers verbal onslaughts came at a time when his own party has officially agreed with the Rajapaksa government to sign a memorandum of understanding on six points to develop the country that include a solution to the conflict in the North and the East.

The former parliamentarian , who has lost his Nuwara Eliya District seat due to the imprisonment , to his own party’s Renuka Herath, obviously made the scathing remarks over the BBC’s Sinhala language service Sandeshaya, to upset the apple cart of some party leaders who have agreed to cooperate with the government like Karu Jayasuriya and Dr. G. L. Peiris, his former colleague.

He attacked the government for trying to devolve power through a unitary system of government and called it the biggest fraud in the world.

While the memorandum of understanding between his party UNP and the ruling SLFP is said to formulate a political consensus and a governance supported by both parties for a limited period of time Dissanayaka said during his interview it should be made use of to challenge the government.

He indirectly expressed his unhappiness for the appointment of Party Secretary Tissa Attanayaka with whom he is quarrelling over the appointment of some one else to the seat vacated by his jail term.

He said there should be a change in the constitution of the party that allows the leader to name party officials. Already , Party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has nominated Rukman Senanayaka, the grandson of the founder leader of the party , who has been a critic of both Ranil and his wily uncle J. R. Jayewardene, as the party chairman probably to give a new Senanayaka image to stop the waning popularity of the party among the rural masses. In the same breath Wickremesinghe also has nominated his protégé Tissa Attanayaka as the party secretary. It was Wickremesinghe himself who was instrumental in making S. B. Dissanayaka the national Organizer.

Many think, the people of Sri Lanka deserve an explanation from Wickremesinghe and others of the United National Party since just few months before the cross over of S. B. Dissanayaka, the party leader and his spokesman Dr. karunasena Kodituwakku were promising the people of the country to prosecute S. B. Dissanayaka , the then Minister of Sports,for his criminal activities over the Susanthika Jayasinghe incident. But as soon as he crossed over to the UNP the alleged criminal record was conveniently swept under the carpet. The true nature of Sri Lanka’s freedom of the press was also exhibited then. Sunday Leader, Sunday Times, Ravaya newspapers and TNL TV hid their interviews done with Susanthika Jayasinghe safely in their attics, since in Sri Lanka press freedom is nothing else but to attack only the enemies of one’s political masters. They also proudly lead free media movements!

To know the seriousness of the crime of S.B. Dissanayaka one should refer to the Special Olympic edition of the Los Angeles Times in which the bronze medalist at the Sydney games gave a shocking interview to the world.

The Los Angeles Times reported in a story filed from Sydney that Olympic bronze medal winner in the women’s 200 meter race, Susanthika Jayasinghe has accused Sri Lankan sports officials of framing her up in a drug charge by tampering with a urine sample to spite her after she refused sex to the country’s powerful Sports Minister, S.B.Dissanayaka.

Written by Mike Penner , a Times staff writer , in the widely read Sydney Olympics special section the shocking news item said Susanthika "won the bronze medal in the 200 meters and bitterly waved the accomplishment in the face of the Sri Lanka Track and Field Federation ,accusing the federation officials of sexual harassment and duplicity surrounding her controversial suspension for a urine sample she believes was tampered with."

The widely circulated newspaper with sales over one million copies said "Jayasinghe became the first Sri Lankan to win an Olympic track and field medal since 1948, representing a national federation she has feuded with since a 1998 out of competition urine sample tested positive for steroids."

The newspaper wrote, "Jayasinghe has maintained her innocense all along , fighting a long legal battle that resulted in the charges being dismissed."

" The battle began , Jayasinghe said, after the man who is the sports minister (of Sri Lanka) wanted to have sex with me . I say , No I am married ." "Jayasinghe believes," the Times said, " that incident led to Sri Lanka federation officials framing her after taking an out of competition sample in April 1998 and refusing to seal the bottle while she was present."

The Times added: "The test came back positive," said Jayasinghe , who contends the sample was tampered with."This makes no sense . I am a clean girl. I never failed any drug test before."

Only when S. B. Dissanayake crossed over to the United National Party former President Chandrika Kumaratunga thought that he was dishonest. She sent helicopters with photographers to take pictures of his palatial house in Hanguranketha .

Hanguranketha House of S.B. Dissanayaka

The historical place is famed to have had a palace in ancient times but no kandyan king would have had a palace as big as his. But he said this house has got only four rooms and cost only 8 million Rupees. By looking at the picture Chandrika Kumaratunga’s photographer took the readers could judge for themselves the credibility of the National Organizer of the United National Party.

The time he spent under both political parties and the great tasks he performed under Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe are enough testimony for the sorry plight of the leadership of Sri Lanka and the blatant political opportunism of the highest order practiced by S. B. Dissanayaka.

Where from Here?

Today, the current efforts at achieving a ‘southern consensus’ mean more than power-devolution and the peace process. It is a road-map to progress and prosperity — enabled as it should be by permanent peace, which the proposed talks between the Government and the LTTE should bring about in the none too distant future. The idea of course is for the two ‘Sinhala majors’ to share common ground for the common good of the common man, but the effort should also include the communist parties, and all sections of ‘minority political opinion’ lest one or other section of the larger Sri Lankan society should feel left out – and look for solutions that are better left behind in the shared past.

By N. Sathiya Moorthy

In a long time, Sri Lanka may not have seen a better week than the one that just passed by. Between them, the decision of the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE to revive the peace process on the one hand, and of the UNP and the SLFP to sign a pact for working together for and on a ‘national agenda’, on the other, are both historic and welcome. Of course, the JVP did strike a discordant note by breaking talks with the SLFP, and launching a protest rally in Colombo, the very same week – but then, along with the JHU, it has been cautious in its early reaction to the joint SLFP-UNP efforts at nation-building, which process Sri Lanka had overlooked or ignored thus far. Looked differently, the two decisions have the potential to change the face of Sri Lanka as never before – and for the better. In this, the SLFP-UNP pact should be as important, if not more, than the other involving the Government and the LTTE. A ‘southern consensus’ of the kind has eluded the nation ever since Independence, and not just on the more recent peace process. Where the southern Sinhala polity had sought to out-smart one another was in denying the minority Tamil community its right to equity and equality.

Today, the current efforts at achieving a ‘southern consensus’ mean more than power-devolution and the peace process. It is a road-map to progress and prosperity — enabled as it should be by permanent peace, which the proposed talks between the Government and the LTTE should bring about in the none too distant future. The idea of course is for the two ‘Sinhala majors’ to share common ground for the common good of the common man, but the effort should also include the communist parties, and all sections of ‘minority political opinion’ lest one or other section of the larger Sri Lankan society should feel left out – and look for solutions that are better left behind in the shared past.

Yet, this is time only for satisfaction, not jubilation. The SLFP-UNP talks can hit any number of hurdles, between now on, and even before they actually sign a memorandum of understanding as agreed upon, tentatively on October 15. The Government-LTTE talks too have floundered all along since the Eighties, when it all began. If anything, it is the failure of the talks since the days of the ‘Sinhala Only’ law in 1956 that is at the bottom of the ethnic strife – and which has affected the nation’s peace and progress ever since.

Where from here, and where does it all lead to? Even as the two ‘Sinhala majors’ have decided on setting up an executive committee to coordinate their political decisions and possibly the execution of those decisions too, there is no such mechanism for implementing and overseeing such implementation of the promises made to the Tamil community in the past. The ‘Two-Language Formula’ for Government employment, introduced in the Eighties, is a pointer. It remains only on paper, lending credence to complaints of ‘Sinhala conspiracy’ emanating even from moderate Tamil opinion.

It is thus that a need may have arisen for the setting up of a constitutional commission, or authority of whatever kind with enough teeth and credible persona on board, to oversee the implementation of whatever future promises that are made to the Tamil community either at the revived peace talks with the LTTE, or otherwise. Not only will such a mechanism ensure the credibility of the southern polity in the eyes of the Tamil society nearer home and the international community otherwise, it will also help streamline the processes that are put in place by the peace talks.

In the immediate future, the Government and the LTTE would have to decide on de-linking the peace talks from continual charges and counter-charges on cease-fire violations, and consequent violence. In the past, recent and distant, such charges have derailed the peace process. The current impasse in the peace process, in turn lending perverse justification to the return to violence and war, owes it to ceasefire violations by either side. That way, the upcoming talks, now being facilitated by Norway all over again, should address core issues of the political and constitutional kind, leaving aside issues pertaining to ceasefire violations and human rights.

This does not mean that such violations could be overlooked or ignored. The LTTE, as an outfit seeking as much legitimacy as it can as per the norms of the international community, and the Sri Lankan State, which continues to swear by the identifiable symbols and legitimacy of international adherence and recognition, need to ponder over the issues involved. In a way, these issues are larger than those ‘core’ or ‘substantive’ issues – and cannot be considered in isolation. If anything, it is only by addressing the ‘core issues’ effectively that the Government and the LTTE could erase all signs of violence and violations.

What’s required thus is both the will and the way to end violence, and not linking its unwelcome revival, if at all, to any future talks on the substantive issues involved in the ethnic strife. Lending teeth to the SLMM might help. Better still could be the strengthening of the SLMM, by widening its scope, and expanding its base and participation. As the very definition goes, the SLMM is there only to monitor the violations, and keep a score-card — not to restrain such violations. The situation demands something more – a peace-keeping force in the true sense of the term, despite the ‘IPKF experience’. For, the SLMM score-card has made the entire exercise laughable, stripping it thus of any seriousness attaching to it at inception.

For any such separation of the ‘core issues’ from ‘ceasefire violations’ to prove effective, the former also needs to be addressed at a faster pace than in the past. To the extent, suggestions for a time-bound peace process should be welcome. Of course, even then the tendency could be well for one or the other party to the peace process to talk its way through the time-frame until such time it thinks it is ready to resume the war, and until such time it is confident of winning such a war. But then, such a time-frame alone would encourage the international community, including the Norwegian facilitator, the donor nations and even friends like India, whom all Sri Lankan parties want actively involved in the peace process, would have some hope and confidence.

In all this however, there is also the need to address the concerns and future interests of the armed forces on the Government side, and the militant cadres of the LTTE. They are a constituency on their own on either side, not only of the ethnic divide, but also of the electoral and political divide. Any negotiated settlement to the ethnic issue would mean and involve demilitarisation of the nation. This in turn would release large sums for funding developmental programmes for education and healthcare, under the evolving ‘national agenda’.

Yet, the State and the nation cannot afford to over-simplify the concerns and contributions of the armed men on both sides. This would be more so in the days ahead – whether or not the peace process succeeded, or the UNP-SLFP agreement worked to the entire satisfaction of the two ‘Sinhala majors’. Sri Lanka just cannot afford such a course. Not now, not ever.

The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. Email:sathiyam54@hotmail.com