LTTE attack drowned in Govt.-Opposition crossfire

By Chandani Kirinde, Our LobbyCorrespondent

Parliament met to debate the extension of the emergency last Thursday, the first sitting since the LTTE displayed its air power .Hence, this became the central topic of many of the speakers. Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, who has the unenviable task of reading out the monthly statistics of the dead and injured in the violence in the country, managed a one-liner on the incident saying the LTTE had failed to get their target when they launched an air attack on the Air Base at Katunayaka.

The idea may have been to down play the incident but as in many other instances, the air attack was another opportunity for different political parties to blame each other and forget who the real enemy is. Chief Opposition Whip Joseph Michael Perera brought along a typed list containing dates of newspaper reports starting from 1995 which had highlighted the LTTE’s air capabilities. “The Government is trying to blame the UNP for this saying the LTTE acquired air power after the CFA. But there are newspaper reports of the LTTE dropping flower petals from an aircraft at a function in the north as way back as 1998,” he said.

JVP parliamentary group leader Wimal Weerawansa who treads carefully when it comes to any shortcomings on the side of the military was willing to rock the boat a little in the wake of the air attack. But in his inimitable manner, Mr.Weerawansa first heaped praise and admiration on the soldiers at Chenkaladi in Batticaloa, who thwarted a suicide attack on the army camp just a day after the air attack and then said had there been more vigilance on the side of those on guard at the Air Base, the attack could have been prevented.

The JVP member also took the opportunity to tell the Government that it had no support in the international arena. “The Government rejected our conditions to support it saying that if it agreed to our proposals, the international community would be displeased. But which country has come out in support of the government and condemned the air attack?” Mr.Weerawansa queried. “The greatest weakness of this government is it does not know who its friend and who its foe is,” he said.

Minister Maithripala Sirisena played politics as usual on the air attack issue. “The UNP is the happiest because of this air attack. Wimal Weerawansa says the international community has not condemned the attack but has the leader of the opposition condemned it either,” he asked. Much of his speech was spent on attacking the UNP, dragging in the poor record on human rights and corruption when the UNP held office.

The UNP leader also got lambasted by the JHU parliamentarian Aturaliye Ratna Thera. “The UNP comes and blames the government for the attack but does not say what can be done to stop them. The LTTE killed off all the UNP leaders and those who are left are puppets of the LTTE,” he alleged. Among all the voices of dissent and acrimony, there was at least one sane voice, that of Minister Anura Bandaranaike. “This problem can be solved only by immediately resuming talks, re-merging the north and east and devolving maximum power. Everyday we switch on the TV news all we see are dead bodies or Sanath Jayasuriya. How long can we go on like this,” he asked.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) had its own set of problems mainly pertaining to the plight of Tamil civilians in the east and the “Sinhalisation” of the eastern province, as its leader R.Sampanthan chose to put it. “Of the six administrative officers appointed to the eastern province there are three Sinhalese, two Tamils and one Muslim. This is in an area where over 75 per recent of the people are Tamil- speaking,” he said.

He said the Chief Secretary and the District Secretary in Trincomalee were both retired military officers and queried if there were any other districts in the country that had ex- military men in administrative positions. The Government chose a back bencher, Deputy Minister Sarath Kumara Gunaratne to wind up the emergency debate. All he could manage was to talk about his own political history and how he was victimised by UNP politicians in Negombo.

It is high time that some MPs were told that they should keep their self-pitying speeches confined to public rallies and learn to talk according to a national agenda, at least in Parliament. Then again that might be too much to ask of many of our politicians. And what does it say about a government which chooses such people to speak on its behalf to wind up a debate as important as the one on the extension of the emergency?