Then comes another clown from India. Subramaniam Swamy advises the BJP Government not to unilaterally have direct dealings with the Sri Lankan Tamils, but to deal with them through SL. Swamy, who had always been a die-hard fan of President Mahinda Rajapaksa said: “Without the willing support of Sri Lanka, India cannot solve any Tamil problem.” What a great advice he could given BJP! Though he is a Tamil, but also a Brahmin, he was not bothered about the 100,000 plus Tamils, who were butchered raped and murdered by the Sri Lankan Army. He aspires to be a minister in the BJP Government. Is Sushma’s Appointment a Bonus for Sri Lanka?
By Visvanathan7 June 2014External Affairs Minister Peiris praised Sushma Swaraj as a “source of strength that can add renewed vigour and better understanding to further strengthen traditionally robust friendship” between the two countries. On 30 May most news outlets in Sri Lanka proclaimed Sushma’s appointment as a bonus for Sri Lanka. Such was the euphoria in Sri Lanka when the Sinhalese heard about her appointment as a foreign minister of India
hSushma Swaraj, the first woman to be appointed as India’s Minister of External Affairs, will no doubt be a key player in forging India’s foreign policy towards Sri Lanka over the next few years. The Sinhalese contention that a strong government in New Delhi that does not have ‘to bow to the dictates of parties in Tamil Nadu is also true. They concluded that Swaraj, unlike her immediate predecessors Salman Khurshid, S.M. Krishna and Pranab Mukherjee, is one of the few politicians in New Delhi that Sri Lankan leaders have developed a close rapport with. They claim she also has a keen interest in Sri Lanka and has repeatedly supported Sri Lanka’s unitary status. So have every Indian leader in the past.All these conclusions were based on the Swaraj-led twelve member delegation of Indian parliamentarians on a familiarisation tour of Sri Lanka in April 2012 in her then role as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The mandate for this delegation was so limited, that the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu withdrew her nominee from the delegation. For example, they could not go wherever they wanted to go in Sri Lanka. The delegation was mainly composed of Congress and DMK anti-Tamils. The Sinhalese claim that Swaraj spent six days in Sri Lanka, attempting to learn first-hand the complexities of ethnic relations in Sri Lanka. Most of that time was spent in the North and East observing the rehabilitation efforts launched by the government. Swaraj also visited the ‘Menik Farm’ village for refugees.
Swaraj then visited the Central Province where she met with representative of Tamils of Indian origin. She also held discussions with President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Minister Basil Rajapaksa, Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and Tamil National Alliance chief R. Sampanthan. During the visit, it was clear to them that Swaraj could relate to and establish a rapport with Sri Lankan leaders-in stark contrast to other visiting dignitaries from India who were often perceived by Colombo as having a condescending attitude towards Sri Lanka.
Within a month of Modi coming to power, the Sinhalese changed their attitude against the Congress government; now they claim they were condescending on Sri Lanka. Rajapaksa was very happy when Modi invited him for his installation as the Prime Minister of India. After Modi did some plain talking to him he returned home angry. He said Modi government is worse that the Congress government and Indians should not be trusted. All their talk of Sushma being a great lady, is based on her visit to Sri Lanka in April 2012. On her return to India, she submitted a report to Sonia, who quietly hushed it. The great mistake that Sushma made was not to talk about her visit to SL in public in India; if she had done that, the Sinhalese euphoria may not have been there today.
The Sinhalese believe that restoring a sense of trust between the two countries will be a priority for the sixty two-year-old veteran politician who had a long and distinguished career spanning over twenty five years, but they didn’t state that building trust with other countries is the priority of any government. The atrocities committed against the Tamils, especially in Mullivaaikkal, cannot escape the attention of Modi or Sushma Swaraj. She has to factor them in, when she draws up her foreign policy
Moreover, Modi spent many visits in TN to win over the Tamils there, but he failed. He had stated that all states will be taken into account when deciding on the foreign policy. How could Modi or Swaraj ignore the sufferings the Eelam Tamils underwent. Modi’s victory in India was mainly due to the younger generation voting for him, but in Tamil Nadu the younger generation, especially the students voted against BJP. Modi is fully aware that the separatist tendencies in Tamil Nadu will increase if this anti-India attitude is not checked, especially when the Tamil candidates, who stood for election, had stated that the government in Delhi had to choose between Tamil Nadu or Sri Lanka.
The Sinhalese journalist spared no time to produce a bio-data on Swaraj. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and has also practised as a lawyer. She began her political career as a member of the Haryana State Assembly in1977 when, at the age of twenty five, she also became the state’s youngest minister with the portfolio of Labour and Employment. Swaraj first entered the Lok Sabha in 1996 and was appointed as Minister for Information and Broadcasting during the short lived thirteen day Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government. During this brief tenure, she was able to commence the live telecast of Lok Sabha debates.
She was re-elected to the Lok Sabha for a second term in 1998. In Vajpayee’s cabinet again, she was sworn in as Cabinet Minister for Information and Broadcasting as well as Telecommunications. She resigned from the Cabinet to take over as the first female Chief Minister of Delhi in October 1998. In the following years, Swaraj continued in national politics and held the portfolios of Information and Broadcasting and also Health, Family Welfare and Parliamentary Affairs, alternating between the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house.
In 2004, Swaraj hit national headlines when she said she would shave her head, if Italian-born Congress President Sonia Gandhi was appointed Prime Minister. Her stand won her admirers among Indian nationalists. However, despite a Congress Party victory, Sonia Gandhi declined the high office on the advice of the then President of India, Abdul Kalam.
Over the years, Swaraj has earned a reputation for being honest and hard working and is popular locally because of her well established nationalist credentials. Her dexterity as a speaker in both Hindi and English and her legal training bodes well for the new office she has been appointed to. As Indian External Affairs Minister, Swaraj has to handle the relationship with Pakistan, US and China. The Indian Prime Minister has already said he would not allow small countries in the neighbourhood to hold India at ransom. In that respect Sri Lanka’s policy of playing the China card will not work on Modi. They were looking forward for China and Pakistan to come forward in support of SL; so far they have been silent. Now SL is already playing the SAARC card, for whatever it is worth.Sri Lanka is thankful that ‘someone who has a feel for Sri Lanka and understands its anxieties and concerns is now handling Indian foreign policy.’ It is expecting to cash in on any goodwill that Sushma Swaraj brings to her new portfolio. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was expected to visit Sri Lanka first, before he visited any other country. After Rajapaksa’s refusal to implement the 13++, Modi has now decided to go to Bhutan first. This did no go down well with SL. Once Modi visits SL at a later date, the Sinhalese will face the ground realities.Below are appended some of the opinions of the Sinhalese politicians and double tongued journalists, who would swing according the weather, on future Indian policy on Sri Lanka. Please see how shrewd and cunning these journalists are and how filthy they can be.
In a riposte to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demand that Sri Lanka should fully implement the devolution package contained in the 13 constitutional amendment and even go beyond it, Lanka’s ruling party said that India has no right to dictate to the island nation what kind of devolution system it must have. “Neither India nor any other country has the right to tell Sri Lanka what kind of devolution system it must have. It is for Parliament of Sri Lanka to decide and the appropriate forum to debate the issue is the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC),” said Nimal Sripala de Silva, senior leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and cabinet minister, addressing the media on 29 May 2014. He failed to mention that PSC is mainly composed of corrupt Sinhalese members and supportive Tamil and Muslim yes-men.
De Silva went on to say that “just as Lanka does not advice India on what powers it should devolve to its states, India should not advice Lanka what powers it should give its provinces.” The Minister questioned the legitimacy of the 13 Amendment saying that it was imposed by India in 1987 as part of the India-Sri Lanka Accord. The SLFP, then in opposition, had agitated against the Accord in July 1987. From this you can gauge what reception Modi and Swraj will receive when they visit Sri Lanka.
Lankan political watchers are waiting to see what steps Indian Prime Minister Modi will take to push for the full implementation of the 13th Amendment. The majority Sinhalese community fears that Modi will be tough given his promise to to give India a strong government which its neighbours will have to respect. Anxiety about an intrusive Indian role is stoked by the efforts recently taken by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to secure the support of Prime Minister Modi and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.
K Godage, a crude former Sinhalese diplomat said on June 1, 2014, in the Sri Lanka Guardian, a new treaty with “our blood relative” India was an imperative and he wanted the way cleared for it. Modi becoming Prime Minister affords us a “God given opportunity” and let us not let it pass. It has been reported that India’s new Prime Minister had raised the old issue of the 13th Amendment, which he said was foisted on them and he insisted that Land and Police powers are not to be given to the Provincial Councils. To his mind it appeared that their leaders had failed to make India understand why they cannot devolve land and police powers to the Provincial Councils in their small country, which is smaller than almost all the Indian states. There is also a fear among them that Russia had already set a precedent in Crimea, that others may want to follow. Even then they will not yield to Tamil aspirations.
He said that their High Commission of Colombo in Delhi should have advised the Indian leaders that, considering the level of crime in that country, a uniform Police Service is an absolute imperative for the stability of their country. Even in Malaysia which comprises of far flung island States, the Police is administered from the Centre. As regards land he said, they must avoid taking over private land other than for uncontested security reasons. He said the country belonged to every Sri Lankan, who resided there. All must be free to settle in any part of the country, even though there was a Tamil kingdom in the North till the Portuguese put an end to it and also that the North (not the East) had been the traditional home of the Tamil people.He failed to mention the source of all the security problem stems from the conduct of the Sinhalese police and the military, who engage in rape, murder and abduction. The military grabs all the fertile land for colonisation with Sinhalese migrants from the south. This colonisation had been going on since independence in February 1948.
The Eastern province, which was a Tamil majority state, is now no longer a Tamil state. How is the SL government going to explain this to the new BJP government. Godage is a former diplomat and now he spends his time writing according to his whims and fancies. Most of the Sinhalese whether educated or not talk as if Sri Lanka belongs to them, and the Tamils can just exist there. In such an environment the Tamils have no other choice, but to seek a separate state.
The other issue, he brought in, was ‘Accountability’, He believes the government is addressing the issue and he would like the government to seek India’s support for the manner in which they are doing it. Godage is not so stupid as not to realise that UNHRC resolution is very clear on what they expect from SL. There is nothing that India can help them in this matter, even if it wanted to. What the Congress couldn’t do, the BJP will not do.
Then he went on an abusive attack on Selvi Jayalalithaa. “The corrupt Jayalalithaa, who has prostituted herself to the Tamil Diaspora which supports her handsomely, will now seek to make things difficult for the Centre and India’s relations with us. It remains to be seen as to how Modi would relate to us in the future for Jayalalithaa would seek to undermine our security and perhaps even our territorial integrity. India will have to ensure that this does not happen.”
This is a typical Sinhalese vulgarity the most educated and uneducated are prone to. Godage is an educated Sinhalese diplomat, who was involved in India/Sri Lanka relationship when IPKF was in Sri Lanka. He could use such language, however much he disliked, on a lady, Selvi Jayalalithaa, who is right now the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. What respect he will he command from the Indians? No one should be surprised at the behaviour of the Sinhalese soldiers in Vanni, the Tamil Homeland.
Then comes another clown from India. Subramaniam Swamy advises the BJP Government not to unilaterally have direct dealings with the Sri Lankan Tamils, but to deal with them through SL. Swamy, who had always been a die-hard fan of President Mahinda Rajapaksa said: “Without the willing support of Sri Lanka, India cannot solve any Tamil problem.” What a great advice he could given BJP! Though he is a Tamil, but also a Brahmin, he was not bothered about the 100,000 plus Tamils, who were butchered raped and murdered by the Sri Lankan Army. He aspires to be a minister in the BJP Government.
Asked why the Tamil issue wasn’t a national issue and the government of India shouldn’t talk to them and bring a long-term solution, Dr. Swamy said, “Certainly we must talk to the Sri Lankan Tamils but talking to them without the concurrence of the SL Government is breach of sovereignty. Does India have a right to directly talk to Hindus of Bangladesh, just because we helped create that country? Or Pakistan talk to Muslims in India,” he queried.
Commenting on the Northern Province Chief Minister’s ‘non-participation’ at the Modi’s swearing-in ceremony, Dr. Swamy said, India did not directly invite the CM but the CM was short-sighted in mixing political differences with the President with a ceremonial occasion. When asked if Sri Lanka’s dealings with China irked India, Dr. Swamy blamed the Congress Party for succumbing to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s blackmail tactics.
Dr. Swamy also said that he agrees to an early implementation of the 13th Amendment as urged by Modi, subject to amendments that build confidence. “We can only urge as friends and cultural siblings that Sri Lanka do it as early as possible so that 1983-2009 memories become a distant nightmare and the chapter is closed.”
On agreeing upon for the 13 A, he said the land and police power can be given at a later stage after ensuring it does not promote religious strife. He added: “We, if you want, can help and facilitate the amity and thus help you argue the issues to resolution.”
Jehan Perera, another touble-tongued Sinhalese journalist, in his article ‘Sri Lanka As A Test Case For A Show Of Modi Strength?’ was far more balanced than Godage in this article. He said that there was a general expectation in Sri Lanka, fueled by the statements of government leaders that a new era of relations would open up when the President of Sri Lanka met the new Prime Minister of India. The mistake was to believe that two nationalisms could cooperate. But in as much as President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s nationalism is in relation to Sri Lanka, so would the Indian Prime Minister’s nationalism be in relation to India’s national interest. This explained why the anticipated honeymoon with the new Indian government had ended before it could even begin.
Addressing a media conference after the President’s return to the country, government spokesman and Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said that the government would cooperate with India always but no one should interfere with the internal affairs of the country.
Rajapaksa promised to fully implement 13+, and that promise was made to the Prime Minister of India, not to an individual called Manmohan Singh who was only the temporary custodian of that high office; a reality in all democracies. It was also promised to the Secretary General of the world body known as the UN. Modi will simply ask Rajapaksa to deliver on that promise or face the consequences.
Modi also needs to calm Tamil Nadu, lest the Sri Lanka issue leads to separatist tendencies over there. Full implementation of 13+ in Sri Lanka will deflate all the hot air from the Tamil Nadu balloon. The fact that Sri Lanka has such close military and political ties with India’s arch enemies – Pakistan and China – and is financially almost a defacto vassal state of China, will only further antagonise India which looks upon Sri Lanka in the same way that Russia looks upon the Crimea.
Meanwhile, they had antagonised everyone – US, UK, EU etc- who could exert some pressure on India. If push comes to shove, none of these western countries will help us anymore. As for our ‘friends’ China and Pakistan, neither of them will go to war, with nuclear consequences, to protect Sri Lanka, which is more and more being viewed internationally as a family regime needing protection rather than a sovereign people needing protection.
In fact, Geneva and the UNHRC is all about protecting sovereign people from dictatorial rulers, as Rajapaksa well knows, having himself gone to Geneva and appealed to the UNHRC to protect the Sri Lankan people from a previous, far less dictatorial, ruler. But having whipped up Sinhala Buddhist feelings, can Rajapaksa give in to the 13+ demand on devolution and foment violent upheavals, of his own making, in the south?
Being a survivor with a throne to protect for his heir, he will most likely cave in to India on the 13+ and deal with any unrest in the south with a Rathupaswela solution in the hope of just carrying on. That may appease the Tamils and India, but any brutality in the south will further embolden the west, through the UNHRC or directly, to aim for a regime change with targeted sanctions – travel bans, asset seizures, and banking sanctions. As if that is not enough, Navi Pillai, who the idiot Mervyn offered to marry, has put Sri Lanka on the UNHRC “Watch List” for the next FIVE YEARS, meaning we are under the microscope and being scrutinized in the spotlight until 2019, with bi-annual reports (in March and September) being made on Sri Lanka’s human rights situation. This will go beyond the terms of office of Obama and Modi. After five wasted post-war years filled with rhetoric and bombast and false promises one can almost hear the words, checkmate. “We are in for interesting times ahead. Many years of it in fact,” he concluded
As if all these controversies were not enough, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, started a new one by declaring what took place in SL in May 2009 was nothing short of a genocide.
“It is very much in keeping with the character of this politician to make wild allegations against Sri Lanka,” the government spokesman and Minister of Information Keheliya Rambukwella told reporters. He was reacting to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi which carried word “genocide” on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue.
She had demanded that India should sponsor a resolution in the United Nations condemning the genocide in Sri Lanka. “I request that India should sponsor a resolution in the United Nations condemning the genocide in Sri Lanka and to hold to account all those responsible for the genocide and thereby render justice to Tamils in Sri Lanka,” the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister had said in the memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister. So the drama continues.
