I will not betray country for a few votes - President

by Shirley WIJESINGHE

President Mahinda Rajapaksa asserted that he is not ready to betray the country for a few votes and he is well aware of the problems of the Tamils in the North. There is no room for a divided country, accepting the homeland concept of the separatists or autonomy leading for a whatever form of Eelam the LTTE had demanded, he added.

Addressing the first UPFA election rally in the City of Colombo at Campbell Park, Colombo on Wednesday, President Rajapaksa said he has clear knowledge of the innocent Tamil majority in the North. He said when he started his first term as President in 2005, the country was about to be divided. “All arrangements had been made by Tamil separatists to declare their Eelam as a separate country. If that had happened, I might have had to fight another State or a separate country.

“My main task was gathering all who love the country and keeping goodwill with our neighbouring countries.

“However, I could direct the military forces to eliminate terrorism from our Motherland and also implement development amidst global economic recession. Recalling the same rally which had been scheduled to be held in Borella at the last Presidential Election, President Rajapaksa said he was unable to attend it due to LTTE death threats.

“Today I am participating in this rally after vanquishing terrorism from the country without any fear.” Responding to claims of his opponents in the election campaign, he stressed that his hands were clean and without any mud or blood on them.

“The only thing they can point out is the family. His brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has he done anything wrong to the country? Wasn’t he a crucial factor to the war victory? So did that brotherhood add any misery to the country by ending 30 years of war? These are originating in the minds of people who hate a family.”

“Fonseka is not coming to discipline the country. They are working under foreign forces who desperately want to hinder the growth of our country as they hate Mahinda Rajapaksa for finishing off terrorism which they had nurtured all these years.”

“With great respect we await the people’s decision that will dump Fonseka and the rest of the crowd for betraying the country.”

- Wimal Weerawansa MP

by Asela KURULUWANSA and Jayanath PEIRIS

NDF Presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka has accepted that the North and the East is the homeland of Tamils by the agreement he signed with the TNA, Left Front Presidential candidate Wickramabahu Karunaratne said. He asked those who called him a Tiger when he expressed the same view in 1974 what would they call Sarath Fonseka now.

He made these observations at a media briefing held at his residence in Kiribathkumbura last week. He observed that Fonseka had already given a bag of promises to the TNA. Also, to enlist their support, he had entered into certain agreements. “Now the JVP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake has suddenly gone silent after this.”

He said Fonseka has promised to release terrorist suspects, to resettle the displaced, to grant self rule and provide jobs etc.

What is not in the agreement is only the promise to return to life the people he killed when he was a military officer.

Although the USA and major European countries tried to strengthen the hold of multinational companies through Mahinda Rajapaksa, they failed in their bid, he said.

by Lakshmi DE SILVA

TNA leader R.Sampanthan had signed two secret agreements with NDF Presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. But the JVP, the second largest political party in the Fonseka camp, were kept in the dark, TNA Parliamentarian and Presidential election candidate M. K. Sivajilingam said on Friday.

Speaking to our sister paper the Daily News, Sivajilingam, who is contesting next week’s election as an independent candidate, said the brokers between Fonseka and Sampanthan were Western People’s Front Parliamentarian Mano Ganeshan and SLMC leader Rauf Hakeem.

“As members of the TNA, we could not accept any agreement made with the Fonseka camp that was not accepted by the JVP, the second largest party backing his candidature. Nor were we told what the agreements they had reached with Sampanthan were. Only photocopies of some documents was shown to the TNA members and Sampanthan is keeping the originals. We are not mad to accept as authentic the copies that were shown,” he said.

He said he was not aware whether Fonseka would break up the North and the East into two or three. “We could have reached a settlement to the problem as far back as 1987, but we had not done it. The promise of abolishing the Executive Presidency made by Sarath Fonseka is also not realistic.

“Therefore, I am contesting the Presidential Poll and I will obtain a large number of votes from the North and the East and will be placed third,” he said. Some TNA Parliamentarians asked whether there was a written agreement between Sampanthan and Fonseka and he refused to comment. When asked whether the TNA was split into two or more factions, they said these Parliamentarians were not aware of such a split. TNA leader Sampanthan is currently on a visit to India with some other TNA Parliamentarians.

While most of the Sri Lankan Tamil media have, for some unknown reason, failed to report the Presidential Election rally held by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in Vavuniya on Tuesday to canvass support for New Democratic Front Presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka, BBC Tamil Service carried excerpts of speeches made by TNA Parliamentarians R. Sampanthan, Mavai Senathirajah and Suresh Premachandran, asking the Tamil voters to defeat President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

This is the first time that a main Sri Lankan Tamil political party has, on its own volition, conducted an election rally in support of a Sinhala Sri Lankan Presidential candidate. TNA, as well its predecessor TULF, always kept away from the Sri Lankan Presidential Election from the time it was introduced saying it is “Sinhala politics” and that the Eelam Tamils have nothing to do with it.

The TNA MPs are, no doubt, LTTE agents. TNA was the creation of the Tamil Tigers and until Prabaharan’s Waterloo, people like Sampanthan always ran to Kilinochchi to get instructions from their Tiger masters.

Are Sampanthan and his TNA Parliamentary colleagues now really free to act on their own volition?

The answer is a big ‘NO’. The very fact that they are now openly campaigning for Fonseka, who incidentally was criticised by Sampanthan in the Sri Lankan Parliament for his still un-retracted statement about minorities, is proof that LTTE elements are still controlling these self-seeking Tamil Parliamentarians. It is a well known fact that the Indian establishment still treats TNA MPs as LTTE agents and looks down on them.

Why did Sampanthan and co decided to support Fonseka and on whose instructions?

Only a couple of days before the TNA’s final decision, Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam announced at his party meeting held in Jaffna that his party would boycott the Presidential Election and would not support any of the candidates. Then, he made an about-turn and went along with Sampanthan, Mavai Senathirajah and Suresh Premachandran’s move to support Fonseka. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam is very close to overseas LTTE networks. His wife is apparently ‘very close’ to Tigers and is among the so-called young Tamil intellectuals among the Tamil Diaspora groomed by the LTTE.

It appears that Ponnambalam had been ordered to reverse his earlier decision and to throw his weight with the Sampanthan group.

Tamil Diaspora sources say that Sampanthan as well his Parliamentary colleagues were ordered to support Sarath Fonseka unconditionally because the LTTE elements wanted to take revenge on Mahinda Rajapaksa for prosecuting the war against the LTTE and for eliminating their top leaders.

They also see an opportunity to resurrect the LTTE in Sri Lanka if Sarath Fonseka is elected to power. Their calculation is that Fonseka is a man without a political base and dependent on the UNP, JVP, SLMC and Mangala Samaraweera. If Fonseka wins, they expect chaos in Sri Lanka with the newly elected President unable to control the Parliament. Being a military man who is known for his independence and taste for power, Sarath Fonseka would not tolerate a chaotic Parliament and would instead abolish the Parliament, Judiciary and takeover full dictatorial powers like military rulers in other countries.

In this eventuality, he would have to withdraw the Army from the North and the East and deploy the troops in the South to prevent unrest.

In LTTE’s calculations, that would be an opportune time to resurrect its fighting force and set up camps in the North and the East to wage another round of terrorist war.

The invisible LTTE leadership hiding abroad is only biding for time.

Though the LTTE is down, they are not completely out. They have the resources and they are slowly gathering the manpower from among the fanatic Tamilians in Southern India. They have teamed up with the Maoist rebels in India and intelligence reports say that they have already set up training camps in the South Indian and North Indian jungles. A large number of LTTE cadres trained in handling explosives and heavy weapons have reportedly been spirited into India to train the new recruits.

Fonseka is therefore a godsend opportunity to the LTTE. Sampanthan and company are being goaded by the LTTE to go full steam against Mahinda Rajapaksa and to gather all the available Tamil votes in the North and East for Fonseka.

The Sinhalese who are now reportedly evenly divided between the two main candidates do not realise the fatal error they are going to make by voting for Fonseka. Sinhalese people fail to understand the simple logic that without an executive decision to prosecute the war against the Tigers, Fonseka would not have carried on with the war. Was it a victory of the Army alone? Without the Sri Lanka Air Force and Sri Lanka Navy, the Army would not have defeated the Tigers. The Navy interdicted all the LTTE arms supplies which was the main cause of their defeat. And the LTTE had no answer to the airpower of the Sri Lanka Air Force.

If the Sinhalese are evenly divided, Fonseka may carry the day with the support of the North and East Tamils and the Muslims. That will be a sure recipe for chaos and the resulting destabilisation would be the ideal climate for the LTTE to raise its head again.

Courtesy: Theepori and Asian Tribune

Two Parliamentarians of the LTTE proxy Tamil National Alliance (TNA) confirmed that joint UNF-JVP candidate Sarath Fonseka has agreed to provide a separate self-governing unit for their party. Speaking to the government-owned Independent Television Network (ITN), the two Parliamentarians also stated that Fonseka as well as Ranil Wickremesinghe had accepted all conditions proposed by the TNA including their demand to remerge the North and East Provinces.

According to Thangeshwari Kadiraman MP, Fonseka has even accepted TNA’s political ideology based on tribalism.

“We need self-governing powers to the Tamil nation. It is the most important demand that we put forward to Sarath Fonseka,” she said. She said the remerger of the North and East Provinces is the second most important demand of their party that Fonseka promised to deliver . “We must be given all powers under our regime. We make these demands because we are a separate nation. One country, one nation, one flag is not an acceptable theory for us, we need a separate system with powers”, she added.

Finally, she revealed that both Fonseka and Wickremesinghe agreed to the list of conditions including the above, forwarded by their party.

“Our party leader, R. Sampanthan submitted our demands to Fonseka and Wickremesinghe. They agreed to all our demands without questioning. That is why we decided to support Fonseka in this election,” she said .

Shivashakthi Anandan MP, speaking to ITN, also confirmed the pact between Fonseka and TNA.

“We submitted our demands to the Government and Sarath Fonseka. The Government rejected our demands. Yet, Fonseka, Wickremesinghe and the UNP accepted all of them. Fonseka has promised to deliver all our demands once he becomes President”, he said.

During an earlier interview with the same TV channel, TNA Parliamentarian S. Thurairajasingham said Fonseka had actually signed a written agreement with the TNA on the above mentioned demands.

The issue about a pact between Sarath Fonseka and the TNA first surfaced as TNA leader, R. Sampanthan exposed the fact at an interview with a Sinhala newspaper, recently. However, Fonseka denied any pact between him and the TNA for the election. He behaved in the same fashion when a weekend newspaper quoted him accusing the Defence Secretary and General Shavendra Silva of committing war crimes. As in the earlier case, the newspaper editor stood by his story.

by Lakshmi DE SILVA and Nivantha KANUWANA

An ex-Captain of the Sinha Regiment, a long-standing family friend of Sarath Fonseka and a resident of Oklahoma, USA confirmed the arms deals in connection with Hicorp International Inc, which is managed by Fonseka’s son-in-law, and its fraudulent registration.

Upul Ilangamage was exposing the duplicitous conduct of Presidential Candidate Sarath Fonseka to the media. He challenged Fonseka to disprove the documentary evidence submitted by him at the media briefing at the Hotel Galadari last week.

Ilangamage claimed that his signature had been used fraudulently to legalise Hicorp International Inc. as the local agent of British Borneo Defence, and legal action had already been taken against Danuna Tilakaratne and Ruvinda Gunaratna of Hicorp International Inc.

According to the summons issued by Oklahoma Country Court of USA, Danuna Tillakaratne and Ruvinda Gunaratne on behalf of Hicorp International Inc.

were ordered to provide written answers prior to January 13, but Danuna Tilakaratne has appealed for another 20 days to provide written answers to court. Ilangamage stressed that the appeal for such extension is clearly to avoid exposing bank accounts related to Danuna’s arms deals with Sri Lanka before the Presidential Election. Danuna Tilakaratne and his business partner Ruvinda Gunaratna were well-known to him before they started their business activities, he said.

“I was well aware of establishing Hicorp and the discussions related to their company with Fonseka,” he said.