Threat To National Security
05 May 2017Today's Joint Opposition (JO)/ Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) sponsored one day strike may be a threat to national security.
The JO/SLPP shadow leader is the SLFP/UPFA Kurunegala District MP and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
'JO'/SLFP/UPFA MP Kandy District MP Mahindananda Aluthgamage speaking to reporters on Wednesday said that their strike is to show solidarity with the GMOA who are protesting against the establishment of SAITM, a private medical college.
While the right to strike is a constitutional guarantee, the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) should ensure that such a strike should not be a threat to national security.
Further, GoSL should even go to the extent of promulgating the Essential Public Services Act (EPSA) to ensure the smooth functioning of the public service, for the public good as a counter to this strike action.
The so called unions of the JO/SLPP joining in solidarity with today's token strike of the GMOA make it, ipso facto clear, that Rajapaksa and his minions want to gain political mileage.
The perverse and perverted politics that Rajapaksa and his minions practise is in no better way exposed than in their support for today's GMOA strike in protest over SAITM, because it was the Rajapaksa regime themselves who were responsible for giving the approval for the establishment of SAITM.
Gaining political mileage is a democratic right, but not at the expense of the citizens of this country.
Therefore, GoSL should not only execute the EPSA, but even go to the extent of enacting emergency laws, while placing the security forces and the police on full alert to ensure public life is not disturbed and law and order not threatened in the country.
The people of this country, elected this government to power for a certain period of time to govern and not to be governed by strikes, politically motivated, or not.
The scouts' motto 'Be Prepared,' is truer now, than ever. The JO/SLPP, together with the GMOA, may be able to play politics, but the GoSL, to its disadvantage, cannot.
What the GoSL however, has been elected to do is to govern and that entails ensuring that day to day public life goes about undisturbed, strike or no strike, and that law and order is also maintained.
Referring to politically motivated strikes, it was Rajapaksa's late leader, Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike, referring to the LSSP and her husband (SWRD), had then said, Mage swami purushayawa nomara meruwa.
What she meant was that the LSSP and its strikes 'nearly killed' her husband.
'Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.'
Using legalistic measures and sometimes force, when national security is threatened by strikes and demonstrations, work.
An example of which is how the then GoSL dealt with the July 1980 strike. They sacked 40,000 striking workers, but yet went on to win the presidential election and a referendum which extended the life of the then Parliament for a further six years without having to hold an election two years later.
Then on 29 July 1987, when the SLFP-JVP inspired demonstrations against the controversial Indo-Lanka Peace Accord took place, the security forces and the police shot some 30 demonstrators near the Dehiwela Bridge and elsewhere. The demonstrators were walking towards Colombo in protest where this Accord was subsequently signed on that same day.
And a year later, that same party which was the government then, saw its presidential candidate being elected to power despite these lawful killings.
On the converse, on the eve of the parliamentary election of 1977, the government in power then, caved in to a general strike held the previous year and ended up being routed in the election that followed.
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