Political parties of all shades, including the ruling PA, are guilty of using the present fashionable slogan that terrorism in the North is an ethnic conflict.
They even dramatise by declaring that it is due to the grievances of the Tamil people.
What are their grievances? Where is the conflict other than the conflicts that occur daily in our own communities? The common man is unable to understand this oft-repeated cry.
But more serious - the class conflict certainly exists. The rich classes whether Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslims feather their nests under any government and exploit the masses. The Sinhala businessmen, lawyer or doctor will not charge anything less, just because his client is of his own community. Likewise the Tamil or Muslim. Wealthy classes, irrespective of other considerations have a very good understanding amongst themselves, when it comes to making the maximum from the less privileged and less educated.
They are aided and abetted by politicians of all hues, who live a symbolic existence with these 'vampires'.
If we are honest, the JVP insurrection (which was crushed brutally) was an expression - that the youth recognised this phenomenon and attempted to change the order - unfortunately it was badly organised.
The politicians are shrewdly aware that the real conflict is between the wealthy and the poor - who are confused and bewildered by the mounting cost of living, their hand to mouth existence, nepotism and graft. They are naturally looking for a scapegoat and the politician ganging up with the rich is able to provide just that by creating ethnic, religious and special hatred. More divisions - the easier it is to exploit the masses.
The so called Peace Package to divide the country into Regions will provide a rich hunting ground for Governors, Chief Ministers, Ministers, Parliamentarians, their kith and kin and henchmen. They will divide the country by creating artificial barriers - causing dissatisfaction through ethnic, boundary and religious conflicts which will keep our nation permanently divided.
In poverty, we will be pitied by the whole world and we will continue to supplicate before the World Bank and other financial institutions for our survival.
In the Regions within the Country, blackmarketeers, crooks and Mafia will take over - with their killer squads they will rule the day preying on the common man who will be manipulated like a robot.
All this is because you and I cannot tap our basic survival instinct, if not our intelligence to forget our political differences and close ranks even at this stage, to form a common united front - a National Government - or whatever you call it, to regain our balance, before we are sold lock, stock and barrel by unscrupulous self seeking politicians. We have to recognise the politician who makes a show of his scars - and is unable to subdue his personal ambition for the greater good of the country and its people or is shadow boxing an imaginary opponent as totally unacceptable.
The main cause that led to the insurrection in the not too distant past was the frustration of educated youth due to the fact that even the few available jobs were given by favour to the kith and kin of politicians. The desperate youth not only worked openly - to overthrow that corrupt regime - but also influenced their elders to vote with them.
They had hoped that with the downfall of that hated ring - the recruitment for employment in the public sector would be on the basis of competitive exams - so that the most suitable person would be appointed.
But they were in for a rude disappointment. Now appointments are made by chits! Jobs are given to the MPs' close associates or relatives - or those who have been able to influence the MPs through the Private Secretaries, Coordinating Secretaries - and their henchmen, for financial and other considerations. Bribery is rampant. People are too timid to hit their heads on political walls.
Though an examination was held on 23.3.96 for the recruitment of teachers, it is an open secret that the MPs have already submitted their lists from their electorates - who will of course get priority. Even part II of the examination paper was out the day prior to the exam and the talk is that they have been circulated privately to the MPs' lists.
The story is making its rounds - that though an examination was held for recruitment of clerks and allied grades - the appointments have been given to only those recommended by the MPs.
The examinations are merely a farce and a facade to camouflage what is actually happening. To add insult to injury the Govt. bags considerable funds by way of examination fees and stamp fees.
But it will be good to remember that for each irregular appointment - there will be a thousand angry frustrated youth who will be waiting to stamp and crush this venomous system, like they would to a poisonous scorpion.
Unless the Govt. can establish confidence, justice and fairplay by holding a competitive exam, and ensuring merit, in every instance of a new appointment - it will not be long before another youth insurrection will be upon us.
So the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) is on the war path again. First it was controversy about the NCMC, then some flimsy demands on the RMO/AMO's issue and thereafter an issue of transfers of some Doctors on humanitarian grounds by the Minister of Health.
Every worker, the world over, has justifiable grievances, but it is regrettable to note that these learned (or so called learned) gentlemen who are educated at the tax payers' expense, spending many years memorising the theories of medicine, should resort to the lowest levels of Trade Union action at the drop of a hat, and hold the Government to ransom at the slightest provocation.
The Government cannot take away the right of the GMOA to go on strike but a strike by members of the GMOA will undoubtedly be a severe blow to the 'common man' who cannot afford the luxuries of a private hospital and seeks to consult a Doctor in a Government Hospital.
When a comparison is made to yesterday's Doctors who had a different scale of value and never thought to risk the lives of patients for personal gain, the new Doctors think they are very important people, but they are only ordinary, not very admirable mortals.
Moral standards of new Doctors have declined and it would be advisable for members of the GMOA to search their consciences and act with much greater responsibility, courtesy and maturity. From some of the comments heard from wailing mothers, seriously ill patients and their relatives who have been turned away due to the strike without any treatment, public wrath will teach you soon to do what self-regulation or the Ministry of Health should have done long ago.
Minister Fowzie is an eminently reasonable man and is quite clear on what he is about. Members of the GMOA should be attending to the more immediate tasks of both, preventing illnesses and curing them while the Ministry runs the administration.
The behaviour of members of the GMOA is unconscionable and uncivilized and its officious attitude can hardly be in keeping with the Hippocratic Oath.
The report 'Crisis brewing in Church' which appeared in The Sunday Times of April 7 reflects only a minority opinion in the Church. It states that there is unrest in the Catholic Church over the possible suspension of Fr. Tissa Balasuriya and disciplinary action being taken against two other priests. Apparently, according to the report, "hundreds of Catholic lay people have signed a petition asking the Church to give a fair hearing to Fr. Tissa Balasuriya". The truth is that a majority of Catholics support this action taken by the authorities, because Fr. Balasuriya has been a source of embarrassment to them for a long time on account of his heterodox views. He asks for a "fair hearing" but it is there, in his voluminous writings spread over three decades. These writings provide a complete proof for the charges brought against him, and no fresh inquiries are needed.
The report is tendentious. It says that the hierarchy "has demanded that he should swear allegiance to the doctrine of the Catholic Church". This surely is an elementary requirement expected of members of any group and hardly "smacks of tendencies from the inquisition era!" It also states that this disciplinary action "may signal the end of the spirit of the Second Vatican Council which ushered in powerful winds of change". Certainly the bishops of the Catholic Church welcome winds of change but they have to be careful when they threaten to be tornadoes sweeping away the ideological structure of the church! And what is in dispute in this matter is not personalities but a false ideology - namely liberation theology - which has to be condemned.
The content of this new theology does not come from revived spiritual knowledge but from the Marxian concept of "praxis" i.e. the involvement of the oppressed in the historical process of change. Salvation is seen not as some "other - worldly" condition: it is the practical construction of social justice in the existing world. They believe that the scriptural texts contain a political message e.g. Luke ch.IV 18 - "He has sent me to heal the contrite of heart, to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised..." Christ himself is understood as a political liberator, the "subversivo de Nazareth", a kind of urban guerrilla.
Liberation theology is highly politicised, and that is its error. There is an important distinction between the politicising of religion and the political involvement and participation of Christians in the problems of the world. Politicisation means the re-interpretation of the essence and nature of Christianity as it was given by Christ into a social or political blueprint for the societies of our day. Political involvement is necessary from the injunction of Christ to look after the poor and to be concerned about our neighbour. But liberation theology has confused these two kinds of categories.
The concept of Politicisation is best illustrated in the following extract from a speech given by a leading liberation theologian. Professor Robert McAfee Brown addressing the World Council of Churches meeting in Nairobi, in 1975, confessed that as a white, male, bourgeois American, he embodied what he called "racism, sexism, classism, and imperialism". He went on "you may feel that I have not made Jesus political enough and that I am too conditioned by bourgeois categories to understand the full thrust of liberation..." What this speech illustrates is the profound change that has occurred in Christianity (or some sectors of it) in recent times, a change which social scientists would describe as "politicisation".
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