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| Sunday, 22 February 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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The great betrayal by H. L. D. Mahindapala What you are about to read is another one of the many stories in which Ranil Wickremesinghe's UNF government betrayed the people. Of course, the devious subterfuges implemented arbitrarily without telling the people were done in the name of (1) peace and (2) a mandate (?) that he claimed to have received from the people at the last election. First, after going round the world in circles, he has yet to deliver the peace deal he promised the people. Second, if he got a mandate, as he claims, why didn't he take the people into his confidence? If the people endorsed his actions as a part of the mandate would they raise any objections, or rally round those who are leading marches against him? Isn't it obvious that it is because he did not have the mandate to betray the people that he engaged in underhand deals, starting with the secret MoU he signed with his co-signatory, Velupillai Prabhakaran? In electoral terms, it could be argued, that neither the UNF nor the PA got a clear mandate from the people because neither group was given an outright majority to form a government. Both parties had to depend on minor parties and the fact that Ranil managed to cobble up a shaky coalition does not mean that he got a mandate to do what he did in the name of peace or the people. Consequently, he had to manipulate the local media (including the pliant AFP, Reuters and BBC) and the political system (mainly its submissive bureaucracy) for him to strut the world stage pretending to be the man who was given a mandate to go against the legitimate aspirations of all the communities and appease only one armed minority. Sooner or later, the full account of his secret deals will be researched and documented. What is known so far is that Ranil himself was a direct wheeler-dealer in the pre-election negotiations with the LTTE. Though Ranil claimed to have obtained a mandate, or a social contract, from the people at the last elections in December 2001 what he implemented was his own unauthorized secret contract with the LTTE. The prelude to this secret contract was revealed by Kathy Stone, an investigative reporter, in the Weekend Liberal (December 21, 2002) published in Australia. She exposed the connection between Ranil Wickremesinghe and 57-year-old Capt. Charles Gnanakone, who had confessed to be a strong sympathizer of the LTTE and acted as a go-between for the Tigers and the Sri Lankan (UNF) government. She quoted the Daily News which said: Gnanakone is reported to be in charge of the shipment of weapons which are smuggled into Sri Lanka for the use of LTTE terrorists against Sri Lankan security forces. Charles Gnanakone of Melbourne and his brother Jayantha Gnanakone of California run the LTTE fleet. Is it then surprising that Ranil Wickremesinghe became the first Prime Minister in the world to pull up his Navy Commander angrily for attacking the LTTE ships bringing in arms? Both Ranil and Charles met at the Conrad International Hotel on June 18, 2000, says Kathy. Both men described the meeting as a social breakfast, she adds. Anyone who knows something about the way deals are struck would concede that a nod or a handshake at cocktails, dinners and breakfasts, or even the golf course, can go a long way than written legal contracts. So when a key operator shipping arms for the LTTE meets the future Prime Minister at a pre-election breakfast in Singapore (it is a heck of a long way to go for just one breakfast!) the post-election action of the Prime Minister to bend over backwards to appease the LTTE becomes all too transparent. No wonder Ranil reacted angrily when the Navy took decisive action to prevent the smuggling of arms in ships of an agent with whom he had breakfast. Besides, he took upon himself to give the LTTE respectability and recognition as liberation fighters in the international community by requesting them to lift the ban on the LTTE. For instance, G.L.Peiris, the chief negotiator for Ranil, tried to talk the Australian government into lifting the ban. But Alexander Downer, the Australian Foreign Minister, bluntly told him to mind his own business and not to interfere in the domestic affairs of Australia. This was not the only secret process going on unknown to the public. The bureaucratic machine headed by Ranil's appointee, Bradman Weerakoon, worked overtime to keep him in office. Like all bureaucrats Bradman revelled in the power he wielded without having any responsibility to account for it to the people. Unelected officers are ever willing to don their masters mantle and pose as the real power behind the throne. And if they have a weakling as their master they enjoy unlimited powers because wide open spaces are left for them to operate either due to incompetence or lack of will of their masters. So with the Prime Minister handing over responsibility to his apparatchiks it was not surprising to find a factotum like Bradman Weerakoon fronting up as the chief spokesperson for the UNF at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The following story reveals not only the extent to which Bradman Weerakoon was pushing his NGO-line which was synonymous with that of the Prime Minister but also how much he and his master were willing to grant the LTTE. Of course, everything was hush-hush. The Prime Minister and his minions never told the people the secret deals with the LTTE. Bradman Weerakoon was the main minion who manipulated the cover-up. Of course, these secret deals were known to the LTTE and revealed to some key members of the Prime Ministers safety net. Only the people of the nation were kept in the dark. The crisscrossing threads of the plot that will be revealed will make more sense if Bradman Weerakoon's connections prior to his becoming the secretary to the Prime Minister are placed in its proper context. After he left the services of the last UNP government Weerakoon went to work for the ICES in Colombo a centre dominated by pro-Tamil ideologues who have been the prime movers for re-imagining Sri Lanka. This is another way of saying that the current constitutional arrangement is not satisfactory and it must be recast according to the political agenda of the pro-Tamil lobby aligned to the NGOs like the ICES in Colombo. It is also a euphemism to siphon off the essential powers of the central government and hand it over to only one community, denying the historical, territorial, moral and political rights and aspirations of the other communities. The ICES in Colombo has over the years engaged in a relentless anti-Sinhala-Buddhist campaign to demonize and weaken the majority and legitimize the claims of exclusive rights to one single minority to establish a mono-ethnic enclave in the north and the east. These foreign-funded NGO pundits knew that this claim has been debunked comprehensively by the ICES branch in Kandy led by Sri Lanka's foremost historian, Prof. K. M. de Silva. But that did not deter them from producing publication after publication, seminar after seminar to demonize the Sinhala-Buddhists. It was in this anti-Sinhala-Buddhist centre in Colombo that Weerakoon found employment after he left D. B. (Deaf and Blind) Wijetunga's administration. Weerakoon, Regi Siriwardena and a Sinhala translator were the only Sinhala employees of the ICES. All the others were Tamils headed by Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy. Her main mission, laid down by her former boss, Neelan Tiruchelvam, was to re-imagine Sri Lanka by remodelling the constitution to make the North and the East into an autonomous State exclusively for their nambaday ahls (our people). The bottom line of the political agenda of the ICES has been to advocate tolerant multi-culturalism for all communities except the Jaffna Tamils who should be given special treatment with exclusive rights to construct their ethnic ghetto based on a manufactured history in the early fifties. Bradman Weerakoon came into the Prime Minister's office carrying this ICES ideological baggage with him. With these close connections it is not hard to guess that his political obligations would be to the ICES than to the nation. Nor would it be too hard for him to push the kind of politics that would disempower the centre and strengthen the LTTE once he took command of strategic position in the Prime Minister's office. The secret missions of Weerakoon unfold from the time he sat in the seat next to his master. In September 2002 Weerakoon was on a mission to consult and brief members of the European Parliament. He met several leading members of the European Union and the following quotes and notes are from the minutes recorded by the Secretary to the PM, Bradman Weerakoon. In the minutes he shortens his designation to S/PM. On September 25, 2002, says S/PM, he met Madam Maria Carrilho, Member of the European Parliament and Head of the Parliaments Delegation for Relations with South Asia in Strasbourg at 1430hrs. (She is the representative in EU for Portugal the cruellest of all the colonialists whose coming in 1505 Ranil has promised to celebrate in 2005!). The minutes recorded by Weerakoon confirms what the people had been suspecting all along. She says that the autonomous State that will emerge with Ranil's peace process should be readily given a flag and an anthem and, believe it or not, Bradman says: No problem. Apart from the political implications of this separate flag and anthem the irony is that it was Ranil's grandfather, the great patriot, D. R. Wijewardene, who picked and selected from various proposals the final format of the national flag which was approved by G. G. Ponnambalam and T. B. Jayah, the two leading representatives of the two minority communities. Besides, Sir, Lalitha Rajapakse, one of his directors at Lake House, too was overseeing the final outcome as a member of the select committee which included S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and Ranil's uncle, J. R. Jayewardene. In allowing his hired factotum to say yes to another flag representing a divided segment of the nation Ranil is not only betraying the nation but his own respected grandfather and his uncle. All this reflects what Dr. Subramaniam Swamy calls the surrender mentality of the UNF government. This mentality was introduced by Ranil, and his minions were only too happy to implement it. Based on his breakfast agreement at Conrad Hotel he approached the LTTE with no intention of bargaining. He went to the negotiating table to surrender and not to demand anything in return. Of course, he couldn't say so in public. So he marketed his surrender either as confidence building or the peace process. He silenced his critics by insisting that any opposition to his surrender is a threat to the peace process. Neither he nor his minions have ever shown any capacity or intention to bargain at the negotiating table. G. L. Peiris, for instance, shocked Melbourne audiences when he told them that giving two thirds of coastline to the LTTE doesn't matter because it consisted of sand and nothing else. It is not that this professor of law did not know that the sovereignty and all the resources of the sea, according to international law, extends from the sand on the coastline to the economic zone of 200 miles across the waters of the sea. It is just that he was trying to bluff his way by being an ignominious mouthpiece to the pre-determined surrender mentality of his master. Ranil's other bureaucratic lackeys too eagerly engaged in hiding the surrender mentality by dressing it up in the buzz words of the NGOs like confidence building. In fact, Bradman informed Madam Carrilho that the LTTE has no fear of being deposed now that Ranil Wickremesinghe is in charge. In a statement of total surrender Bradman informs the lady that the Prime Minister is realistic as to the challenges ahead, including the question of de-commissioning of weaponry. This realism means that the Prime Minister will not insist on disarming the LTTE a condition laid down by his friends in the Western safety net when they are threatened by terrorists. Bradman says, in the next statement that follows, that even the LTTE is now finding it difficult to control their armed forces, implying if the LTTE can't control how can his Prime Minister do it. If further evidence is needed of this surrender mentality it came from Geoffrey Van Orden, Member of the European Parliament, whom he met at 10:30 hours on September 25, 2002 in Strasbourg. Van Orden had visited Sri Lanka in June 2002 and had met key political actors including the Prime Minister, Defence Minister and the lame duck, Foreign Minister, Tyronne Fernando. The following quotes from Bradman's minutes are revealing: Mr. Van Orden then said it appeared to him that the government was conceding a lot, having pulled back from areas that were earlier under its control. The LTTE was coming into these areas and moreover they were giving the message that they (the LTTE) are now the entity in charge. Given this situation, Mr. Van Orden said, he would like to know what the Government was getting in return? The answer: S/PM responded that the Government may in turn be getting access to the LTTE's own areas. He pointed out as an example the opening of the A9 running through the Vanni, plus its lateral road. (This proved to be a deliberate distortion on the scale of G. L. Peiris saying that the coastline consists of only sand. The LTTE has since encroached into territory defined in the MoU as the government land.) Van Orden: You are in a way conceding equivalent status to the LTTE? Bradman: S/PM agreed that this was inexorably happening. What more proof is required when the words of surrender come out from the horse's mouth? Mr. J. W. Cushnahan, another Member of the European Parliament, whom Bradman met at 1745 hours on September 25, 2002 in Strasbourg made some serious comments about disarming the LTTE. He suggested, says Bradman, that the Government take the approach of making during the negotiations, a commitment in principle to withdraw from the zones, while linking the implementation of this commitment to clear progress on the part of the LTTE in disarming itself. In other words, he said, the onus towards creating the conditions necessary for withdrawal from these zones, should be placed on the LTTE as well. Even the NGO pundits (including pro-LTTE academics like Jayadeva Uyangoda) will concede that these warnings and questions were not raised by war-mongers, or Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinists. Indian military experts and Maj-Gen. Sarath Fonseka too warned against the withdrawals from security zones without any reciprocal guarantees. But Ranil Wickremesinghe and his minions have ignored the warnings and conceded the demands that were critical for the enthronement of the LTTE in their mono-ethnic enclave. If this isn't the great betrayal of the nation, selling out its future, what is? |
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