On Thursday last week, a TNA delegation comprising of R.Sambandan, Suresh Premachandran, Mavai Senathirajah, and Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, met India’s National Security Advisor M.K.Narayanan, Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon, High Commissioner Alok Prasad and others at India House. Among the points the TNA delegation made was that the re-settlement of IDPs should be done immediately because 75% of the land was free from landmines and there was no need to keep people in the camps. They had also said that the army can now be withdrawn from these areas to create a situation of normalcy and the curfews can be relaxed.

The TNA also mooted a resolution to the ethnic problem and wanted to see these things happening within a time frame of about six months to one year. When this columnist asked Premachandran, who has known Prabhakaran over the years, whether the images of the dead LTTE leader were authentic, Premachandran’s answer was that the pictures ‘look like him’ but that it was up to the government to prove the identity of the corpse scientifically.

Many people have not yet really come to terms with the events of the past week. Sri Lanka is now on the threshold of a new era, ushered in by the Rajapaksa regime. When the news of the total annihilation of the LTTE was conveyed by Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, to the president, Rajapaksa was in the company of Wimal Weerawansa, Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga, and advisor Sunimal Fernando. On hearing the news, an emotional president had spoken to JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe and said that without the JVP, he wouldn’t be where he is today and that they had done a great service to the country by helping him to get elected.

More than two years ago, the present writer said in this column that Mahinda Rajapaksa as a politician and a ruler ranked only below two other leaders of post independence Sri Lanka – D.S.Senanayake and J.R.Jayewardene. With last week’s victory, it is now my opinion that he has outstripped both Senanayake and Jayewardene to be undoubtedly the greatest leader of post independence Sri Lanka. Compared to the challenges that Rajapaksa had to face, DS had no challenges. JRJ had similar challenges, but the way he handled it and the end result he achieved was not as successful as that of Rajapaksa.

No one but a man of iron will, could have withstood the pressures emanating from the West in the last stages of the war against the LTTE. What President Rajapaksa and the sahodara samagama comprising of siblings Gotabhaya and Basil have achieved, is still beyond comprehension. It will take months for the true implications of this victory over terror to sink in. In the meantime, the only leader that Mahinda Rajapaksa can be compared to is Abraham Lincoln. Like Lincoln, Rajapaksae too won a separatist war and just as Lincoln changed the face of America forever, Rajapaksa and the sahodara samagama too will change the face of this country forever. It was after Lincoln that America became a world power. We are not going to be a world power, but things are going to be very different in Sri Lanka from now on. These are stirring times that we live in and as my friend Malinga Herman Gunaratne said, we are lucky to be alive in times like this.

US Ambassador Robert Blake relinquished office last week in order to take up the position of Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia. South Asia includes Afghanistan and Pakistan, both hotbeds of terrorism which export terrorism to other countries. Blake’s performance here does not give anyone the confidence that he has the capacity to handle terrorism. During his stint in Sri Lanka, he did everything to prevent the LTTE from being defeated. Even the delay in the IMF facility to Sri Lanka on non-economic grounds and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement that this would not be the appropriate time for the IMF to grant Sri Lanka the loan is due to the adverse reports on this country by Blake. Those who have watched his performance in this country would be worried sick that he spent three years destabilizing Sri Lanka and is now off to Washington to destabilize the whole world.

The United States government proscribed the LTTE many years ago. Then in 2002, at the request of the then UNP government of Ranil Wickremesinghe, the US Defense Department, carried out a military assessment of both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military and produced a massive report which can be described as the most comprehensive, most incisive analysis ever done by an outside party about the two combatant sides in Sri Lanka’s 30 year civil war. This report compiled by a team of experts from the US Pacific Command provided inspiration for all the military leaders who won this historic victory over the LTTE. It had clearly pointed out that the LTTE would never settle for anything less than a separate state and that the only way to defeat them was by military means. They had described Prabhakaran as a technology savvy megalomaniac and, among other strategies, had even recommended an airborne assault on the Vanni jungles to eliminate Prabahakaran.

The considered opinion of the defense arm of the very government Blake served should have made him more cautious when making public pronouncements about the Sri Lankan question. Yet from the very day he set foot in this country, he has been making statements against the Sri Lankan government. He always twisted the arm of the government, but never that of the LTTE. What he always said was that the government should put forward a political solution so as to isolate the LTTE. This was idiotic logic to anyone who knew the LTTE – so long as they had weapons there was no question of the Tamil public accepting a political solution and abandoning the LTTE because the LTTE never allowed the Tamil people to abandon them. Even while Blake was in this country, in 2008, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation officially declared the LTTE to be the deadliest terrorist organization in the world ranking even above Al Queda.

Despite the unanimous opinion of the US defense establishment about the LTTE, Blake continued to do his level best to prevent the LTTE’s defeat. He always acknowledged that the LTTE was a terrorist organization but he wanted the government to stop the war and negotiate in a situation where the US defense department has clearly said in so many words that there was no point in negotiating with the LTTE. When in an interview with him I asked Blake whether he had read the 2002 defense department report, he said he knew nothing about it. The week before last, I asked Robert Kaplan, a defense expert from the US, why the American state department and the defense department tended to work at cross purposes in this manner. Kaplan’s answer was that when it came to conflicts that were of importance to the US, the state department and defense department tended to talk to one another; but when it came to second tier conflicts like Sri Lanka, each branch of government tended to do its own thing. This is one of the shortcomings of the American bureaucracy. Even relief efforts after hurricane Katrina were hampered because of this lack of co-ordination.

Be that as it may, if Blake does in Afghanistan and Pakistan what he did in Sri Lanka and insists that the governments of those two countries stop the war and reach a political solution with the Taliban, he will end up destabilizing the whole world. If he does not do that and favours a policy of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan as Hillary Clinton does, the whole Muslim world will be up in arms against Blake because if his approach in Sri Lanka on the one hand and Afghanistan and Pakistan differs, that will be interpreted as being due to prejudice against Muslims. His differential treatment of non-Muslim and Muslim terrorists would be so palpably different. While he was in Sri Lanka, the fact that he pretended that the defense department and FBI opinions do not even exist shows a lack of professionalism in the man.

Blake had the attitude of a naive do-goodder, not a dispassionate professional. His attitude would have suited the head of the ICRC but sits oddly on an ambassador. The reason why he smugly told me that he had not seen the 2002 defense department report may have been to preempt me from stumping his argument. But if the American ambassador can be stumped by quoting official documents of the American government itself, then that should have led him to re-examine the position he held. In view of what the defense authorities of his own country had said about the LTTE, he should have been more cautious in his approach. But Blake just shot his mouth off at every opportunity he got. He never appeared to have any depth in him and all his utterances were just platitudes and airy fairy hopes going completely against the opinion expressed by the security establishment of his own government.

When J.N.Dixit was the Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, people said he was arrogant and behaved like a viceroy. But nobody said he was a nitwit. It’s painful to see an envoy of a powerful country who insists on making a fool of himself every time he opens his mouth. Mercifully for the world, even though Blake will be US Assistant Secretary of State, he will not be handling Afghanistan and Pakistan which will be under Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke. So he will not be able to do what he did in Sri Lanka, in that part of the world. We in Sri Lanka need a rest. The British government was sensitive to this and have sent us Peter Hayes, who after the buffoonery of Dominic Chillcott has provided a very welcome respite for Sri Lankans. Let’s hope the next American Ambassador will keep public performances to a minimum, and give us a respite from painful-to-watch ambassadorial antics.

UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe returned from his tour of Europe under cover of darkness in the early hours of Saturday. Usually when the party leader returns from an overseas trip, UNP parliamentarians are told to go to receive him. But this time, no such notification had gone out and the intention was to come back with as little fanfare as possible. When he left the country for this tour of Europe, the government raised the cry that he was going to Europe in a last ditch attempt to invite foreign intervention to stop the war against the LTTE. UNP MP Lakshman Kiriella didn’t help clear the impression by arguing that the UNP leader was going abroad to enlighten the international community about the lack of democracy in Sri Lanka. Wickremesinghe himself deftly fended criticism of his visiting Norway saying ``the war is over and Norway has no longer any facilitatory role.’’ The LTTE was finished off while he was still overseas, doing what the government propaganda machine said was ‘carrying tales to the suddas’. In political terms, this may be the most costly foreign trip ever undertaken by the UNP leader.

Wickremesinghe came back to chaos in his party. The partial reforms that were implemented a couple of weeks ago, with some of his powers being ceded to the political affairs committee and the deputy leader has ensured that no intra party rebellion against him has been launched after the WPC debacle. But these reforms could run into problems. Last week, the political affairs committee met under the chairmanship of Karu Jayasuriya. Under the provisions of the working committee decision, even if Wickremesinghe had been in the country, he could not have chaired the PAC. One of the matters discussed at this meeting, was to take away the UNP university students organization from Wickremesinghe protégé Akila Kariyawasam and to give it to Dayasiri Jayasekera.

A couple of years ago, Wickremesinghe told Jayasekera to organize the university students and then without any explanation, the responsibility was given to Kariyawasam. This is the first time the political affairs committee met after Wickremesinghe stopped chairing it and one of the first acts the PAC has done is to discuss the appointment of Jayasekera as the head of the UNP university students organization. How Wickremesinghe is going to react to this remains to be seen. All decisions taken by the PAC are only recommendations which have to be ratified by the working committee which is still controlled by Wickremesinghe.

This is not all. The PAC discussed the removal of Justin Galappatthy from the position of Matara district leader and the appointment of Sagala Ratnayake in his place. Many members of the PAC were of the opinion that this decision was wrong and that it shouldn’t have been done at this particular time. Even Vajira Abeywardene, Wickremesinghe’s closest ally, who also heads the UNP’s powerful Provincial Councils and Local Government Committee, had opposed the removal of Galappatthy from the position of Matara district leader. The PAC will be discussing this matter with the party leader when he gets back and, in any case, when the PAC meets in another two weeks time, the removal of Galappatthy will be taken up again for discussion with a view to having it reversed. The riot at the Matara district committee meeting made it to the front pages last Sunday, with Karu Jayasuriya and Tissa Attanayake having to be taken out of the premises under police protection.

The Matara district office where this ill-fated meeting was held is located in a part of Galappatthy’s house. Before the UNP leader left the country on his European trip, he had summoned Galappathy to Colombo and told him that when the southern provincial council is dissolved, he will cease to be the leader of the opposition in the SPC, and that he will therefore lose his seat on the working committee. In order to prevent that, he wanted to appoint Galappatthy as an assistant secretary of the party and appoint him to the working committee. Galappatthy, knowing fully well that his party leader was trying a fast one on him, said that as the district leader he will be entitled to sit on the working committee even if the SPC was dissolved. Seeing that Galappatthy was not going to be fooled, Wickremesinghe had revealed his hand and said that he had promised the district leadership to Sagala Ratnayake after one year and that he had allowed Galappatthy to remain in that position for two years because of the sacrifices he had made for the party. It was now time to hand it over to Ratnayake.

Galappatthy had told the party leader that he had to discuss the matter with his family and his constituents before coming to a decision. When he got back to Matara after this discussion, he found the whole town plastered with posters with a photograph of Sagala Ratnayake and the slogan "Matara wansaye nayakaya." To add insult to injury, one of these had been posted on the parapet wall of Galappatthy’s own house. On the day of the Matara district meeting, what had inflamed the passions of those present had been this poster which was interpreted as a caste slur. Ratnayake is Govigama whereas Galappatthy is Karava. In addition to this, an emotional Galappatthy in his welcome speech outlined all the indignities that he had been subject to despite his long record of service to the party.

At this, the people present began to ask Karu Jayasuriya and Tissa Attanayake for an explanation as to why Galappatthy was being removed from the position of district leader. Some wanted to know what ‘wansaya’ you needed, to be district leader. The meeting became unruly thereafter with several chairs thrown at the new district leader Ratnayake. Then the security guards surrounded the parliamentarians and escorted them out, leaving the business of the district committee meeting unfinished. Even though some newspaper reports had said that Jayasuriya had been pushed and Vajira Abeywardene slapped in the melee, it appears that the security guards had been able to get them to safety unharmed.

Galappathy remains combatively defiant. He refuses to accept the appointment of Ratnayake as the district leader. His position is that when he is removed from the position of district leader on the eve of a provincial election which he will have to contest, that would seriously undermine his prospects. He also holds that if it was the party policy that the district leader should be a parliamentarian, then Ratnayake could have been appointed when the position fell vacant after Mahinda Wijesekera left. He says he never asked for the position, but now that it had been given, to remove him seriously affects his career. He is at present engaged in going around the district, explaining to UNPers, about the injustice that has been done to him. In fact, when he was appointed to this position, I asked a UNP bigwig why a provincial councilor should be appointed district leader over Sagala Ratnayake who was in parliament. The answer that I got was that Ratnayake was not experienced and that Galappathy was an old party hand. Now two years later, Ratnayake is perhaps deemed sufficiently experienced to take over the district leadership and Galappathy can be dispensed with. This fracas has further weakened an already very weak district for the UNP. Galappatthy is a popular politician in Matara and many UNPers go to him to get things done. To undermine a provincial opposition leader in this manner on the eve of an election is suicidal in political terms. Wickremesinghe as usual is the genius of the inappropriate action at the inappropriate moment.

The politically savvy and entrepreneurial Sajith Premadasa pulled off a political coup last week by bringing a motion in the UNP political affairs committee to the effect that the UNP would oppose any move to take Sri Lankan military leaders before international courts for war crimes. A discussion ensued and Johnston Fernando said that if the UNP is going to pass such a resolution, then those involved in crushing the 1989 JVP terror should also be included because some officers were still being hauled before courts for alleged ‘crimes’ committed in crushing the JVP rebellion. Adding to this, Abeywardene had reminded Premadasa that when his father was involved in crushing the JVP insurrection President Rajapaksa had gone to the International Human Rights Committee to complain against Sri Lanka. Ravi Karunanayake had asked whether they weren’t jumping the gun because no process of the sort had really begun.

Besides, he had pointed out that the UNP had in any case opposed this kind of thing from the days of President Premadasa. Abeywardene said that we had to be careful about pumping up (pumbanawa) the images of certain people in the government because it was likely that Gotabhaya Rajapakse may enter politics at the next parliamentary elections from the Kurunegala district and Sarath Fonseka from Galle. Rukman Senanayake had supported Premadasa’s suggestion. Before the PAC meeting commenced, a team from Derana TV had been seen in the premises and many members of the PAC had been wondering aloud as to why a TV crew was around. It later transpired that Sajith Premadasa had invited the crew to Sirikotha for him to make a statement about his resolution and establish ‘ownership’ over it before anyone else ran away with his clothes. After discussion, the motion was unanimously passed by the PAC and Sajith had his moment of glory. Other members of the PAC were critical of this and said that the announcement should have been made by Karu Jayasuriya and accused Sajith of being a lone ranger instead of a team player.

But to accuse a politician of one up-manship is like accusing a lawyer of lying. That is their very stock in trade. Sajith has been more pragmatic and entrepreneurial when it comes to the war than the UNP leader. Whenever the party leader took the wrong turn, Sajith always took the right turn, helped no doubt by his gut feeling about the LTTE. His father was assassinated by the LTTE and, as he had told a mutual friend, the LTTE had taken his father for a ride The Tigers should never be trusted unless you wanted to get your fingers burned. When the UNP leader dismissed the victory in Thoppigala as the capture of a tract of jungle, Premadasa gave an interview to the Divaina saying "Thoppigala was indeed a great victory". If the UNP leader had the same instinct that Premadasa has, the party may not be in the predicament that it finds itself in at present. At the last working committee meeting, when Lakshman Seneviratne tried to get a resolution passed to the effect that the UNP opposes the pressures brought by the international community on the government to stop the war, Wickremesinghe had shot it down on the grounds that international pressure was the government’s problem not the UNP’s.