June 19, 2013, 8:06 pm
Personally, as a reader, I owe grateful thanks to the editor of The Island newspaper for publishing the above debate between DRs. Dayan Jayatilleke(DJ) and G.H. Peris(GHP). It was an entertaining and instructive debate with elegant and compelling arguments from both sides. I remain unconvinced by DJ’s arguments. I am, of course, for the abrogation of the 13A, and if this is not practically possible, the abolition of the powers that could lead to the secession and independence and the bifurcation of the country. Given the experience of the attempted UDI by one Tamil Chief Minister not so long ago, this is a prudent step to take while we have the opportunity to do so.
The missing element in Dr.DJ’s arguments is the weakest link in the implementation of 13A in the North. This is the weakness prone human piggy-in-the-pork. I do not believe that all the 300,000 plus Tamils rescued from the despicable trap of Velu will, in an election, vote for his acolytes who too appear to have set eelam paradise and Nandhikadal debacle as their end-objectives. Given the prevalent thinking that those people will be ungrateful and vote TNA to power in the North, then the powers given to the Provincial Council will come into play. It will be too late then to take any measures to counter the full exercise of such powers. It is then the gloom and doom predicted by Dr.DJ will be forced upon us by International forces inimical Sri Lanka on the lame excuse that full democratic rights of the Tamils in the North are being suppressed by the government.
Just look at the TNA set-up. Who are they? They were the proxies of LTTE. To this day they have been silent on all the atrocities committed by the LTTE. While loudly proclaiming their bogus democratic credentials, they have not had the decency to denounce the dastardly deeds of the LTTE including the conscription of children to fight a futile war. They still peddle eelam ideology in their demand for excluding the non-Tamils from the North, have a police force under their control and the ejection of the Security Forces from the north. These demands are a blatant challenge to the loyalty to one Sri Lanka.
We know from experience in the south that the police force could easily be converted by monetary inducements to contract killers. If we add to this corrupting money, power and powerful ideology of separatism, then that police force could become a formidable force driving the engine towards an inevitable violent conflict with the Security Forces who will be called upon to evacuate their premises in the North. Surely we do not want this, do we? What if this separatist police force receives moral, physical (fighting men and arms) and financial help from near-neighbours abroad?
Land is a limited resource. The present twenty million or so Sri Lankans do have an inalienable right to that land. Therefore no community, however big or small, can have an exclusive claim to any part of it. If one adds to this the millions still unborn then it becomes clear that a third of the land available cannot be assigned to a tiny proportion of the population for their exclusive use and enjoyment. The future needs of health, education, recreation, housing and food production are seriously put at jeopardy if we today give into this most unreasonable demand.
In my books the present TNA politicians are the most unsuitable persons to implement the 13A. All the elegant arguments and honourable constitutional principles propounded by Dr.DJ will simply be subverted by these hard-hearted separatists in their push for eelam. We certainly will be dumb fools to help them in this endeavour by handing them the 13A with all the powers it contains.
It is time to ask all Indians opposing the amendments whether they would accept any amendments to their constitution imposed on them by non-Indians purporting to settle the Kashmir problem or the Naxal problem in the north east of India!
Durand Appuhamy
Negombo
island.lk