.

The UNP and the package

by S. L. Gunasekara
Why did the UNP oppose the Government’s proposals for constitutional reform [the ‘Package’] until Ranil Wickremesinghe’s surprise announcement that his party would provide the Government with the necessary support in Parliament to pass those proposals into law ? The reason for such opposition is to be found in the following two sentences in Ranil Wickremesinghe’s letter to the President by which he pledged such support:-

"As a policy we are committed to maximum devolution of power without a division of the Country. Accordingly, we find the concept of a Union of Regions unacceptable"

It follows from this passage that the UNP opposed the ‘Package’ because of its sincere conviction that its enactment into law would result in a division of the Country and that it is still of the same conviction - the use of the present tense confirms this. Why then has it now decided to lend its support to a measure which it believes will result in the division of the Country ? The ‘reason’ advanced by Ranil Wickremesinghe for this volte face is set out in his letter as follows:-

"It appears the only solution your Government has to solve this burning issue is the proposed constitutional reform process. Our position on the proposed reform has been clearly stated.

It is our stand that the measures you intend taking in this regard will not be the answer to this problem. But since you do not have any other solution to solve this problem we will not obstruct the course you intend taking. Therefore we will extend the necessary support in Parliament to make your initiative a success."

This ‘reason’ does not bear examination. Clearly a ‘solution’ to the problem that plagues our land must necessarily be a course of action that will restore peace. It is axiomatic that a division of the Country would be incapable of restoring peace but would only aggravate the existing situation. Thus, though Ranil Wickremesinghe describes the ‘Package’ as the "only solution" that the Government has, it is evident from his letter that the UNP does not consider it to be a "solution" at all, but that it would, nevertheless support it because the Government has not put forward any other proposals as a solution to the problem !!! In short the UNP has, through its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, pledged the support of the UNP to pass into law a proposed Constitution which the UNP believes and continues to believe would not result in the restoration of peace but only result in the division of the Country!!

Perhaps realizing the criticism he would necessarily have to face for agreeing to support what is, in his own words "unacceptable", Ranil Wickremesinghe has sought to provide himself with a defence to such criticism in advance by stating in his letter as follows:

"In the event that you fail to achieve success in this experiment, I hope your party will extend the same cooperation to new constitutional proposals that will be brought forward by a future UNP Government".

Thus Ranil Wickremesinghe seeks to make out that even though the Package’ may now be passed into law with the support of the UNP, the UNP hopes to repeal it with the help of the PA no sooner it comes to power again if it does not result in the restoration of peace.

By uttering these words Ranil Wickremesinghe has only exposed his own appalling ignorance of the contents of the ‘Package’ in that it is implicit in them that he is of the view that even if the ‘Package’ is adopted as our Constitution, the UNP and the PA would, together, be able at a future point of time to repeal and replace it with another Constitution as and when they wished. The ‘Package’ however provides otherwise - for Article 101 [2] thereof provides that notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Chapter dealing with amendments to the Constitution but subject to Article 101(1), any Act or provision of an Act which amends or repeals and replaces or which is inconsistent with any of the provisions of the ‘Package’ which deals with the Devolution of Power to the Regions

"shall not come into operation in respect of a Region until and unless such Act or provision has been approved by a resolution of the Regional Council established for that Region."

What this means is that if the ‘Package’ is passed into law, Parliament would be powerless to effect any change in any provision of it which relates to the Devolution of Power even with the unanimous support of all Members of Parliament of all Parties and the approval of the People at a referendum, unless each Regional Council approves of such amendment - so that if one Regional Council does not approve of such amendment and the other Regional Councils do, the amendment would be operative only in the Regions of the Regional Councils which approved of it and be totally inapplicable in the Region of the Regional Council which did not approve of it.

The ‘Package’ is not therefore, something that could be passed into law as, an "experiment" and later amended or discarded depending on the results of that "experiment" as Ranil Wickremesinghe believes it to be. On the contrary, the passing of the ‘Package’ into law would constitute a point of no return. Though the reasons advanced by Ranil Wickremesinghe for pledging the support of the UNP to pass the ‘Package’ into law do not bear examination, the paeans of what they believe to be ‘praise’, heaped on Ranil Wickremesinghe by his misguided admirers who referred to his volte face as a "coup de grace", a "masterstroke", an act by which he outmanoeuvered his adversaries and put "the President on the back foot" etc., do bear examination - for the conclusion is inescapable that that pledge of support in the circumstances in which it was made is nothing more noble than a shoddy political manoeuver to prevent the disintegration of the UNP by an unknown number of its Members of Parliament going over to the Government along with the introduction of the ‘Cross-over Bill’ which the Government so shamelessly sought to introduce.

By his letter to the President Ranil Wickremesinghe has proved himself to be one who, together with the ‘High Command’ of the UNP finds the disintegration of the Country to be a lesser evil than the disintegration of that Party. Alas.

LEGAL WATCH
Reverse magic sends discussions back to square one

by Nayana
Magicians are known for pulling interesting objects out of seemingly empty boxes. For the last five and a half years Sri Lanka’s ruling politicians seem to have done precisely the reverse and convinced the public and the international community that it had the solution to this country’s internal conflict all wrapped up in a package when in fact the search for the solution is only now beginning.

Records will show that this Government has repeatedly told the Sri Lankan public and the world that it had the complete solution and that it needed only the cooperation of a recalcitrant opposition to make peace a reality. Just sixteen votes in Parliament were all that was needed, we were told at the recent Presidential election.

Now that the opposition has announced that it will not stand in the way of the "package" if the Government insists on passing it, we suddenly find that there is no package to place on the parliamentary table. It is only after the opposition leader’s letter that a committee was appointed comprising representatives of the constituent parties of the People’s Alliance to sit down and finalize proposals for a draft new constitution. We are told that they will thereafter seek the views of the Tamil and Muslim parties who are their parliamentary allies, and only after that will the cooperation of the opposition become relevant.

It has been sought to justify these discussions on the grounds that "much water had flowed under the bridge" since the publication of the Government’s draft proposals in October 1997. Undoubtedly it has, but the constituent parties of the PA have been in constant contact in the daily business of government since that date, and the Parliamentary Select Committee was also sitting for at least some part of that period. New ideas could have been discussed and amended proposals placed on record. If the Government’s own constituent parties and its allies could not reach agreement between October 1997 and now, what is the guarantee that they will do so in the foreseeable future?

In any event there is no doubt that up to last December the Government clearly held out to the people that it had a package ready and that it was only the opposition that was obstructing its implementation - "just sixteen votes" were needed.

It must also be remembered that it was on the strength of a supposedly agreed solution that the Government was able to win the plaudits of the international community, label its local critics as traitors, and spend large sums of unutilized project aid on publicity campaigns such as the "Thavalama". It seems that never in our history have so few hoodwinked so many for so long!

That said, we must now consider what, if anything the country can gain from this reopening of discussions. Some changes have been hinted at which could be viewed as positive developments.

The first of these concerns the retention of the Executive Presidency. This column has long maintained that there is nothing inherently bad about an elected executive presidency as an institution. The experiences of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton demonstrate that the executive president, even of the world’s most powerful country, need not be above the law.

Furthermore, the recent political experience of India with its repeated "hung" parliaments, has shown that even under a prime ministerial system of government the president can be required to make crucial decisions regarding the choice of government and the interpretation of the people’s mandate. It is therefore important that such a president should not be the appointee of one particular party or government but should be a person who is independently elected and hence independently accountable to his electors.

In addition, a Head of State directly or indirectly elected by voters from all parts of the country serves as the focus of national identity in a country where internal powers of government are devolved to provincial or regional bodies. It is for this reason that many Sri Lankans who have reservations about the wisdom of the Government’s devolution proposals are often found to advocate the retention of the executive presidency.

Of course there are two major areas where the executive presidency created by the 1978 Constitution requires modification to bring it into line with democratic principles. The first is the removal of the blanket immunity from legal proceedings conferred by Article 35. It is true that under Article 35(2) the operation of any limitation period is suspended during the president’s term of office so as to enable actions to be instituted after the president has ceased to hold office, but the issue here is one of principle: Respect for the rule of law requires that all persons including those elected to high office should be required to abide by the law.

This type of immunity originated in monarchical societies where all justice was said to flow from the King who, accordingly, could not be sued in his own courts. The doctrine has no place under a republican constitution where "the People" are said to be sovereign Nor will the removal of the immunity in any way threaten national welfare or security. In Israel, perhaps the most security conscious of all states, the President and the Prime Minister are both presently under investigation for alleged financial malpractices.

Another important democratic check on the power of an executive president is the independence of the legislature from the executive. This requires, firstly, that the President should not have the power to dissolve the legislature at his/her choice. Alternatives are either a fixed term legislature like the two Houses of Congress in the United States of America, or a legislature with a stipulated maximum term which is dissolvable before time only on the happening of certain specified events such as loss of parliamentary confidence in the government or failure to pass the national budget.

Parallel with this is the requirement that members of the legislature should in the last resort be answerable to their electors rather than their party bosses. It is only then (and not through any crossover bills) that members can truly vote according to their conscience.

It must be admitted that of all the measures discussed above, only this last one stands some chance of being voluntarily implemented by the Government, with indications having already been given that the present "PR" system may be altered to allow for at least 50 per cent of the Members of Parliament to be directly elected.

It must also be remembered that the foundation of democratic government lies in the right of the people to choose their government at regular intervals by a free, equal and secret ballot. Given the repeated failure of the Commissioner of Elections and the Police to prevent serious incidents of violence, impersonation and other forms of ballot rigging during elections, the opposition’s proposal for an independent elections commission and an independent police commission is vital if confidence in the electoral process is to be retained. The fact that electoral malpractices also occurred during the opposition Leader’s time in government is no excuse for continuing a fraud on the people.

It remains to be seen whether the opposition will try to introduce some of its proposals as part of a bargain for its support for the package - always provided the Government does eventually table the package. It is useful to remind the opposition that removing presidential immunity was also one of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s campaign pledges.

Finally it remains to be seen what response the package receives from the LTTE with whom, for the first time, the Government has acknowledged the need to hold discussions prior to the implementation of its proposals. Further evidence that the Government has never properly thought through a strategy for solving this country’s internal conflict is provided by the fact that it has already proscribed the LTTE and now faces a legal dilemma as to how it is going to negotiate with a proscribed organization or, alternatively, whether it is going to lift the proscription without any reciprocal concessions being made by the LTTE.

To return to our original theme, this too was not disclosed to the people during the recent election campaign. One wonders how would it have sounded to the voters, if the campaign slogan had been: "We only need another 16 votes plus the agreement of the LTTE with whom we are going to negotiate."

Corruption scandal hits Helmut Kohl

By Dr. Stanley Kalpage
The Christian Democratic Party (CDU), the mainstream conservative party in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), is in deep trouble. For nearly three decades the CDU had buttressed Germany against communists on the left and nationalists on the right.

About two months ago, former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, admitted that he had kept a slush fund of about $ 1 million for election campaign purposes but refused to reveal the names of the donors. According to German law all campaign contributions in excess of $ 10,000 have to be reported. Germany has the most generous system of state financing of political parties in the world.

An independent CDU audit carried out by the firm Ernst and Young found a much larger amount than what Kohl had acknowledged, some $ 6 million, in illegal party donations whose sources cannot be traced. This includes about $ 1 million which Kohl has admitted between 1983 and 1988 and another $5 million between 1989 and 1993.

The scandal spreads

The slush fund scandal reveal that, using his privileged role as Chancellor of Germany and Chairman of the CDU, Kohl had run the party as his personal fiefdom for more than two decades. He had done everything he felt was necessary - including the acceptance of illegal cash donations - to preserve the Christian democrats hold on power.

The traumatic impact of the crisis was captured on by the suicide of Wolfgang Hullen, the head of the CDU parliamentary group’s budget and finance department. It is believed that the reason for the death was not private but political. Hullen’s suicide note is said to have referred to the financial dealing of the party and possible embezzlement.

As the scandal unfolded, Germany was going through a serious moral and political depression that has raised questions about its very survival. Some Christian Democrats were speculating about the party fragmenting into several movements and fears were being expressed for Germany’s political stability.

Assistance to a key ally - France

It would seem that Helmut Kohl had wanted to reassure French President Francois Mitterrand that a reunited Germany would not drift toward the East and abandon a special relationship with France. This seemed possible as the government and the nation’s centre of gravity shifted east to Berlin. Kohl had evidently encouraged the French state-owned oil company Elf Aquitaine to buy the Leuna oil refinery in eastern Germany.

The Leuna purchase by Elf Aquitaine was touted by Kohl as a crucial move to implant a French presence in eastern Germany - with control over a key dimension of the country’s energy grid - so that France would feel reassured about Germany’s desire to maintain a special partnership with Paris.

By giving France a presence in the east and control over a key fuel resource, Kohl believed he was helping maintain a healthy partnership with a key ally. The French weekly Paris Match published part of a letter in which Kohl asked Mitterrand to intervene and ensure that Elf would buy the refinery.

Kohl wrote: "I would be extremely obliged if you would use your personal influence so that Elf carries out this project, without hesitation, as envisaged by the contract."

But investigators believe that some of the money paid for the oilfield had found its way into CDU coffers. At least $40 million is missing, and documents related to the Leuna sale have vanished from the chancellery shortly after Kohl was voted out of office in 1998.

During their 13 years in power together. Mitterrand, who died in 1996, and Helmut Kohl had a close relationship. Mitterand came to regard Kohl as a partner in building European unity and believed that sustaining his leadership was an important guarantee that a reunified Germany would carry out its promise of sacrificing the German mark in favour of a single European currency, the euro.

Investigations

Criminal and parliamentary investigations are now being conducted to examine whether president Francois Mitterrand may have urged France’s then state-owned energy firm Elf Aquitaine to channel $ 15 million into secret CDU coffers to support Kohl’s 1994 re-election campaign. Reports indicate that the funds could be part of $ 40 million in missing commission from the sale of the Leuna oil refinery in eastern Germany of Elf Aquitaine.

Documents pertaining to the deal disappeared from the office of the chancellor shortly before Kohl left office. The government of his successor, Social Democratic leader Gerhard Schroeder, has vowed to track down the missing files.

A Kohl spokesman called the Elf Aquitaine report "another attempt at character assassinations" and French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, who served as Mitterrand’s chief of staff, said he had never heard about such a transfer.

Refusal to reveal donors

Kohl’s refusal to identify the source of anonymous donations has fuelled speculation that the money was used to buy political favours. The German Parliament has launched an inquiry to examine whether bribes or kickbacks influenced government decisions under Kohl, during his chancellorship from 1982-98.

Kohl refused to identify the sources of the money, saying he had given his "word of honour" to donors. But speculation was rife even among CDU party members that Kohl may be reluctant to name the sources because the funds may not have come from individual donors but were the result of commissions or kickbacks that could be related to decisions made by his government. This could make him vulnerable to indictment on bribery or corruption charges.

Eckart von Klaeden, a CDU member of Parliament who is one of the party’s top legal experts, said he found Kohl’s version of events hard to believe. He said: "If these people were respectable citizens of our land, as Kohl says, they would have freed him from this word of honour a long time ago."

Christian Democrats in deep disarray

As a result of the slush fund scandal the CDU is suffering a serious moral and political depression. CDU party chairman Wolfgang Schaeuble called the slush fund discovery "a very grave problem that represents an existential crisis for our party and a danger for our nation’s democracy". He pledged that the Christian Democrats were determined to enact reforms that ensure "nothing like this will ever happen again."

But Schaeuble backed away from earlier threats to take legal action against Kohl, who has admitted running illegal accounts worth up to $1 million during the last five years before he was voted out of office in 1998. Kohl has spurned all entreaties from the party to defuse the crisis by complying with the law and identifying the donors.

Diffident about taking legal action against Kohl for fear of a backlash among his supporters, Schaeuble said the party would sue its former accountant, Horst Weyrauch, a close ally of Kohl Weyrauch had created the system of slush funds and has been implicated in laundering funds for the CDU through banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It was hoped that this would provide explanations for clearing up the mess.

Decline of European conservative parties

The CDU’s political troubles are not unique among mainstream conservative parties in Europe. Centre-right political movements that dominated post-war governments in Britain and France are also in disarray and suffering existential crises. Their long tenure in power appears to have nurtured an arrogant complacency that left British Tories, French Gaullists and now Kohl’s Christian Democrats vulnerable to various scandals.

Moreover, the collapse of the Soviet empire and the triumph of free-market reforms have stripped the heirs of Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and Adenauer of their compelling, anti-Communist political agenda. Europe’s mainstream conservative parties have also been forced on the defensive by rival Social Democratic parties that have moved toward the centre by embracing deficit-cutting measures, deregulation and other free-market policies.

Britain’s once-powerful Conservative Party, which transformed the nation under Margaret Thatcher’s radical free-market policies from 1979 to 1997, has been hurt by a succession of sex and sleaze scandals. The party is also fighting a bitter internal war over its attitude toward the European Union and the single continental currency, the euro. The governing Labour Party under Prime Minister Tony Blair now enjoys a 20-point lead in opinion polls.

In France, President Jacques Chirac’s Republican party has broken apart over the euro currency and whether to surrender more sovereignty to the European Union. After Chirac miscalculated by calling early parliamentary elections in 1997, the Socialist Party scored enormous gains and formed a new governing majority that forced the president into an awkward power-sharing arrangement.

Like British prime minister Tony Blair and French socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, Germany’s chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has tried to prevail over the left wing of his Social Democratic party in pushing through tax reforms and welfare cutting measures that would reduce the state’s role in the economy. Even before the scandal, Germany’s Christian democrats were struggling over whether to support or obstruct Schroeder’s proposals - which closely resembled their own economic policies.

But now, those concerns have been swept aside while the CDU leadership strives to heal divisions caused by Kohl’s recalcitrance to name his benefactors and the likely torrent of more bad news following further investigations into the slush fund scandal.

p
Who killed Ponnambalam and why?

We must have been ten when we first met. I recall that I was fascinated — I had not seen anyone so dark. In fairness to him it must be said that he could take a ‘ribbing’ in class — we always referred to him as ‘the world’s most handsome man’ he never took offence.

We went through school together - we became sort of friends — on more than one occasion I visited him at his big home and later in 1955 we were also at Aquinas together. I recall that he received tuition for his Advanced Level and once I too was invited and sat in on a British Constitution class by a lovable south Indian teacher by the name of Srinivasan. During the class quite suddenly the great man himself — G. G. Ponnambalam emerged (I saw from where Kumar had got his colour) and asked the teacher a few questions and not being particularly satisfied with his son’s progress then told Kumar "you cannot be the son of G. G. Ponnamabalam".

Kumar, lived all his life under the shadow of his famous father. The man had been a colossus among the Tamil people of this country — he was also a much feared lawyer and an eminent parliamentarian and orator - a huge load to carry for any son — who was bound to be compared with the father. Though he was sent to some of the best universities in the world, he nevertheless suffered from a complex because of the huge stature of his father. He took his father’s name — G. G. Ponnambalam. He sought to revive his father’s party but the country had moved on. He could not bring himself to join his father’s opponents in the Federal Party or the TULF. He detested the TULF leaders for they did not recognize him as a Tamil leader of any consequence. Whereas Neelan Tiruchelvam had national and international recognition, he had none. He resented Neelan intensely. It all came out after Neelan was assassinated.

Ponnambalam found he was being left behind in our world of politics. He sought to use his ample funds to carve out a political niche for himself. He contested as an Independent in 1982 more to become nationally known than anything else. He lost his deposit. He was bitter that he did not win support even in Jaffna leave alone Wellawatte.

Kumar Ponnambalam was no quitter he had ambition even if he did not have anything else. He was determined to become a Tamil leader. During the period of J. R. Jayewardene he made his entry but that was all he did not want to take on old Royal contemporary Lalith Athulathmudali — he kept his head below the parapet. The next President was a formidable man for anyone to take on — he did however write one article critical of Premadasa, and was quiet after that. He was perhaps warned by well-wishers to avoid taking on the President. Kumar concentrated on his law practice. Kumar next emerges with the advent of the liberal regime of Ms. Kumaratunga. Just as others came out of the woodwork so did he. Most people treated him as a joke and did not take him seriously. He therefore got away with outrageous statements against the government and the Sinhalese in particular, though he earned much of his money in this country and from the Sinhalese.

He did almost anything to attract publicity. He courted arrest by not carrying a Sri Lanka government identity card — there was no law under which he could have been arrested. He did not dare do any of these things during the Jayewardene Presidency when Lalith was around or during the Premadasa Presidency when Ranjan was also around. In fairness to him I must say that he tested the waters once by writing a critical piece on Premadasa and may have been quietly warned for we heard from him no more. He probably knew that if he repeated his heroics he would most definitely have been dispatched to sing with the fairies. His bravado was only after Ms. Kumaratunga came to office.

It is not irrelevant to recall the ‘media freedom’ we enjoyed in yesteryear. In recent times we have had Ranil Wickremesinghe waxing eloquent on media freedom — do we not remember how Harold Peiris, the Editor of the Observer, Phillip Cooray and Ian Jayasinha were hauled before Parliament for contempt, merely because of a misplaced caption. Do we not remember the number of law suits against newspapers and threats to sue. Do we not recall how a ‘bold editor’ of today bolted the country to escape certain death under Premadasa — and last but not least do we not recall the murder of Richard Zoysa.

Kumar Ponnambalam was one who made absolute use of the new climate of freedom, to state the most abominable with impunity — he abused privilege. Certain elements who had an axe to grind with the government, featured him on talk shows, where the man not only slandered the Sinhalese but to also openly defended the traitorous LTTE. Ponnambalam committed sedition with impunity. I would have liked to have seen him do this on behalf of the Tamils of Malaysia — where he owned many estates. He took full advantage of the soft culture of the Sinhalese to pee on them.

Ponnambalam became a hero in the eyes of the Tamils. Here was a man in the heart of Sinhala country insulting the Sinhalese, calling them by offensive names and getting away with it. He fast became a sort of cult figure among the Tamils. He appeared free for Tamils detained under the PTA. He defended the LTTE after the Central Bank bomb, the Galadari bomb and even the Maligawa bomb and got away with it. To the Tamils he was naturally a very brave man. He had become an icon. But this was also the reason for his execution.

Prabhakaran is a paranoid man. He fears his own shadow — and who can blame him; for the attempts to assassinate him have been many both in India and in this country. We recall the clashes in Tamil Nadu and his many escapes — more recently his closest friend of many years and his deputy Mahendraraja or ‘Mahattaya’, had plotted with RAW to assassinate him — he found out in the nick of time and had his friend hacked to death (not shot as some believe).

More recently Soosai who was responsible for establishing the Sea Tigers was executed. Anyone whose loyalty was suspect or who emerged as a threat had to be eliminated. Prabhakaran not only eliminated all Tamil leaders from ‘tall Sri’ of TELO who was dragged through Jaffna town behind a jeep, to all the other Tamil leaders. He personally supervised the midnight decimation of PLOTE and other cadres in Jaffna in 1985 — he brooks no rivals. He had Padmanabha and the entire ‘Politbureau’ of the EPRLF murdered in broad daylight in Madras in June 1990.

Prabhakaran is also meticulous planner. He is absolutely brilliant when it comes to the elimination of anyone on whom he has passed the sentence of death. (He has no doubt read of the assassination of Leon Trotsky). A few examples should suffice to prove my point. Take the assassinations of Amirthalingam and Yogeswaran and others in Colombo. The ‘boys’ cultivated the TULF leaders over a period of time and when they were least suspect — came in with their weapons and finished the job in Chicago style and escaped.

Next take the Premadasa assassination, Babu found employment in a small shop close to the residence of the President and befriended the establishment at Sucharita for over one year. He even flew in a helicopter with the President. He became a trusted man and on the appointed day he did what he had been nominated to do. Methodically planned and executed. According to the LTTE he died gloriously.

Ponnambalam as stated earlier had become a threat to Prabhakaran. He was being hero-worshipped in Colombo among the Tamils as a brave leader, certainly braver than Prabhakaran who was hiding in the jungles of Vavuniya. Ponnambalam was also in the process of setting up a new political party with himself as its ‘great leader’ to contest the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

Prabhakaran has also decided to field a slate in order to control parliament (assuming that an election under PR would not give either of the Sinhala parties an absolute majority). Prabhakaran would certainly not have wanted Ponnambalam, an elite Colombo bourgeoisie, as a political leader in parliament representing him, speaking on his behalf, rivalling him and stealing his, the Supremo’s glory. Tiger Radio in a clandestine broadcast some weeks before his assassination attacked Ponnambalam, describing him as a Colombo based bourgeoisie capitalist basking in the glory of the LTTE — so he had to go.

As for the letter purported to be by a Sinhala organization against terrorism, claiming it was Shanta and not Shantan — that like the honour bestowed on him posthumously by the LTTE, was a red herring drawn by the LTTE. Do you think any Sinhalese (recall his reference to the Sinhalese as ‘DROHI’) man could have befriended Ponnambalam and called on him regularly and lured him from his home? — not even a man from Thumpane will believe that.

Further is there any Sinhalese organization which could plan an operation such as this? That is to credit the Sinhalaya with much too much — it is not in his blood and he is wholly incapable of such operations he could certainly kill but not work out a brilliant operation such as this or the other LTTE operations referred to in this article. The Shanta story was intended to sow confusion and hatred among the Tamils for the Sinhalese — a subsidiary and incidental benefit to the assassination — the principal objective.

Ranjan C.

Continued...

  | NEWS | EDITORIAL | DEFENCE | FEATURES | LEISURE | BUSINESS | SPORTS | ADS |