Daily News Editorial

Another throw of the dice by Weerawansa 

14th October 2015

Maverick politician Wimal Weerawansa is back at his favourite game, raising the international conspiracy bogey as a result of the joint UNHRC resolution signed between the US and Sri Lanka. Weerawansa says the country's sovereignty is at stake and has decided along with the joint opposition to hold a meeting at the Viharamahadevi Park next week to educate the people on the dire perils awaiting the country by this single act of betrayal, according to him.

Despite the Government's repeated claims that what is going to be constituted is not a hybrid court and that the investigation or judicial mechanism will be in conformity with the country's supreme Law, the Constitution, Weerawansa's continuing insistence of doom is a clear indication that the NFF leader is working to a set agenda of rousing public passions (as he has done in all other instances when similar issues cropped up in the past), to open a flank for his deposed boss to make yet another a political comeback.

To begin with, the public are in the dark as to who this joint opposition is going to be, because the bulk of the UPFA members of Parliament are today either Ministers or Deputy Ministers in the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government. Nay, a good many of them today even accompany Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on his official oversees visits and significantly they too were once in the company of Weerawansa calling Wickremesinghe a betrayer of the country and what not. Hence it is difficult to comprehend how this changed state of affairs accords with Weerawansa's view of Ranil Wickremesinghe as a betrayer. Isn't this an admission that his one time erstwhile colleagues were today consorting with the enemy (read betrayer) and that Weerawansa had been left high and dry. Or is it that by their very action this band of UPFA stalwarts have demonstrated to the public that all about Weerawansa was just hot air and that what the NFF leader had all along being engaging in is hyperbole and rhetoric which has no basis in fact? We wrote in these columns that the UPFA by association had absolved Wickremesinghe of the 'traitor' tag that had bedeviled the latter's chances of aspiring to Presidential office. This reality it appears has still eluded the likes of Weerawansa, Gammanpila et al who still takes delight flogging this dead horse.

Weerawansa should first come clean with the fact that non of these hybrid courts or damage to the country's sovereignty would have come about had his erstwhile leader Mahinda Rajapaksa acted on the undertaking he gave the international community of instituting a credible domestic mechanism, at the end to the war. Instead, the war victory was exploited for political gain and as a ploy for remaining in power forever. What is more, the UN was ridiculed by Weerawansa and his band of marauders laying siege to its local headquarters with its staff prevented from leaving the compound. Not stopping at that, a sham fast unto death was staged opposite the UN compound by Weerawansa, only to be rescued by his leader pouring thambili water down the throat of the would be martyr. A state sponsored demonstration was held on May Day with employees of all Government institutions brought onto the streets carrying placards and shouting slogans insulting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. These antics, needless to state, further antagonized the UN and the Western countries which voted in favour of an international war crimes inquiry against Sri Lanka on successive occasions.

It is certainly to the credit of the present Government that it had reversed the whole process while agreeing to such an investigation solely on Sri Lanka's terms. which the likes of Weerawansa are reluctant to admit. Today the joint opposition which Weerawansa claims to be bringing together for the big do is none other than the Abayaramaya clique composed of a motley band of politicians who are drifting and rudderless, with the massive hemorrage in the UPFA after the August 17 General Election. So much so these politicians have today outsourced their racist campaign to the likes of like minded individuals from the National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT).

The Government has already given an assurance that no member of the security forces would be penalised in any manner. What in fact will take place is not an investigation per se but a fact finding exercise to determine what took place during the crucial stages of the war.

It has been the constant refrain of the likes of Wimal Weerawansa that the January 8 revolution was engineered by the US backed West. This has also been the contention of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Now, the outcry of Weerawansa and Gammanpila et al is that the joint resolution is going to harm the country's sovereignty. By making such statements aren't they not eating their own words? For, will the West which was instrumental in effecting a regime change create conditions in the country for such a backlash by the Sinhala majority so as to see an ouster of the very Government they installed, in no time?