The green leap into responsibility

Light Refractions by Lucien Rajakarunanayake

There is an unmistakable sense of delight among the green jumbos, who are yet to make a leap into government office. Their delight is because the headlines have just now turned away from the internal crises of the UNP.

Having failed to enlist India's support to stop the haemorrhage of elected members into the ranks of those holding ministerial office of deputy rank, a threatened jumbo leadership is suddenly excited that the headlines are now about Maavil Aru, Mutur and the housemaids in Lebanon.

The excitement is such that the jumbo leader is now trumpeting about holding the government responsible for all these situations. In recent days Ranil W. has been making loud noises that the government should accept responsibility for the situation at Maavil Aru, at Mutur and the plight of the Sri Lankan housemaids in Lebanon. Strange guy he is. The government has not only accepted full responsibility for its moves to reopen the sluice gate at Maavil Aru, it also launched an important military operation to get it done. Obviously the leader of the UNP is pointing the finger at the government for having launched this operation, instead of a futile jaw-jaw with the tigers, still very close to Ranil's heart.

Dammit. This one time Prime Minister and presidential hopeful is blissfully ignorant of the importance of irrigation water for the rural people of this country. Little does he seem to know that the responsibility for the crisis at Maavil Aru remains entirely in the claws of the tigers that closed the sluice gate. It was the sense of responsibility of the President towards the people, which made him decide that water, a birth right of the people, is not a subject open to negotiation, and called on the help of the armed forces to open the sluice gate.

There is much more responsibility in this than the UNP leader signing the Ceasefire Agreement, without showing it to his Cabinet, or the Head of State who was also Head of Government and Commander-in-Chief, at the time. He thereby tied Sri Lanka down to a wholly flawed and one-sided agreement, by which the tigers have increased their strength ever since it was signed.

Ranil, and those left in the UNP with him, are obviously dancing for joy at what took place at Muttur.

While so many who suffered in Mutur and others who studied what happened there have blamed the LTTE and its policy of ethnic cleansing for the tragedy that struck the people of Mutur, the UNP's leader is happy to get on to his latest hobby horse and shout that the government should accept responsibility for all that happened there.

Once again it is the determination of the government not to give in to the tiger advance into Mutur, and carry out a ritual appeasing of the tiger, which Ranil W was so adept at and pleased to do, which led to the LTTE to retreat behind its lines marked out by the pro-tiger CFA.

Ranil W and his green chorus will obviously find it difficult to stomach the fact that it is the sense of responsibility of the government, especially towards the Muslim people of Mutur, which made it decide to take the fight into the area to which the tigers had intruded in its bid to drive out the Muslims.

The leader of the UNP is hardly a person suited to talk about the responsibilities of the government in this regard, without still making an unambiguous condemnation of the actions of Prabhakaran and his armed terrorists at Mutur.

It is necessary to ask the UNP and its leader whether their party, which claims to enjoy the support of the minorities, including the Muslims, have written off the Muslims of Mutur, in their desire to be on the best of terms with the LTTE. Is that the sense of responsibility that such an old and large political party has? Nobody, least of all the victims of LTTE violence and intimidation in Mutur, can be fooled about Ranil W's sense of responsibility by the UNP arranging for some relief supplies to those displaced people. While providing relief to the needy is no bad thing, the good measure of that relief is reduced by the fact that the UNP is trying to regain its lost political stature by exploiting the suffering of the people of Mutur.

And now to Lebanon. To go by what the Ranil W. his green cohorts and stooge media seek to show, the responsibility for the plight of the Sri Lankan housemaids in Lebanon, rests solely with the government, and has nothing to do with the Israeli attacks on that country. While Ranil and his bugle-boy Tissa Attanayake holds the government responsible for the situation of our housemaids in Lebanon, their ever friendly media even gives huge spreads to housemaids flown back home by the government, who say it is better to have died there than come home to Sri Lanka. So why did they not stay back there, one would ask. Not the kept green eyed media, never.

While many Sri Lankan housemaids there are eager to return, the vast majority of nearly 90,000 over there have not shown the eagerness to come home, as much as the UNP wants to get them back pronto. This is cheap politicking of the worst kind. The stuff that comes from those who are green with envy at the success the government has shown in bringing so many back home already. Not all the shouts of holding the government responsible for these several crises come well from those who through dishonest politics have reached the nadir of irresponsibility.