Leave, leave…please leave! Lanka will finally be able to breathe again. If you cannot afford to leave, I will personally send you the funds. Leave, for heavens sake leave, Lanka deserves better!

Sinhala dictator not ok – hence why SF coup was squashed!

Why didn’t the Mahanayakes didn’t refute the statement by Ranil then? Why did they call the convention in the first place which has never happened before?

“The LTTE would have been defeated even if another commander like Shavendra Silva or Jagath Jayasuriya was in his position. Sarath Fonseka was a skillful soldier, but he was a mere functionary in the war machine. The war would not have been won if it wasn’t for the political leadership of Mahinda and Gotabaya, and even the Tamil diaspora knows that. That’s why the pro-LTTE parties overwhelmingly supported Fonseka. His supporters you speak of were the ones who were against the war, and claimed Fonseka was not even suitable for the leadership of the Salvation Army, and said that the army is going to Paman Kada not Alimankada (Elephant Pass) and that sort of thing.”

Using the same argument, I can say if Ranil become president, he would have done it as well and that’s the reason why LTTE prevented people from voting for him. At that time LTTE saw Ranil as a bigger threat than Mahinda.

“Mahinda doesn’t need intimidation and fraud to win the election. Even a two-thirds majority sounds plausible given how fractured the opposition seems to be. If elected, he will ensure that peace, stability and prosperity prevail in Sri Lanka. As for democracy, just because you don’t like the way people vote doesn’t mean that Sri Lanka is not democratic.”

If he got 2/3 majority, he is not acting like it at all. Ground reality is he lost presidential election not by huge margin nor by largely Sinhalese support, but because the Tamil people voted for SF overwhelmingly and rest of the voters stuck their usual voting bases.

Wimal Weerawansa got Ashu Marasinghe from Japan who is a professor to hack the election results system who specializes in IT. Look for the where about of him during election time. Just compare the reaction of Dayanda right after the election. Then he is claiming he never said such things and it’s all over the internet on video. This change in heart must be due to either he was threatened with something or he was paid overwhelmingly.

I would agree with that. MR is a lawyer with 40+ years of political experience. The possibility that someone with zero political experience, of the likes of SF, could dislodge MR? Extremely unlikely. MR knows the system extremely well; every backdoor, front door, hidden door, and where/when to build new doors. Under a different set of circumstances, it is possible that he might use his maneuvering capabilities for the betterment of the country. Unfortunately, MR has changed quite a lot since his JVP days. His focus has long been on promoting the interests of his family; I don’t think its any accident that Namal has entered the political scene so quickly. I cannot really comment objectively on the psyche that underlies MR’s behavior; suffice it to say that it is not too different from the one that CBK had – hold on to power at all costs. MR is simply using more subtle, protracted means to finetune his grip on power. He is using the pre-existing mechanisms, of course, e.g. Emergency Regulations, Executive Presidency, but I believe his main focus is the slow but sure build-up of the family dynasty. That will be his other “gift” to the country. Just as the country was infatuated with Bandaranaikes once upon a time, now it will be the turn of the Rajapakse’s. Once upon a time, a master manipulator of the masses, Adolf Hitler, had this to say:

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”

I too find it difficult to reconcile Mahinda the human rights campaigner with Mahinda the commander in chief. All I could say is that Mahinda is an opportunistic politician, then and now, and he did what any politician would do in his situation.

I believe that stability and prosperity is more important to Sri Lankans than anything else. Yes, there were many excesses during the Premadasa regime, but he did what he had to do to keep us safe from the rabid JVP. We would all be starving refugees had the JVP succeeded in 1989.

Now Rajapaksa is acting as if he is the sole representative of Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. Journalists are being abducted, arrested, assaulted and killed in order to clamp down on freedom of expression. Anyone who disagrees with Rajapaksa or poses a challenge to his absolute power is called a ‘traitor’, and is victimised or killed.

Mahinda Rajapakse managed to get about 75% of the Sinhala-Buddhist votes. He represents us. There is no such fear campaign in Sri Lanka. I can see hundreds of articles in Sri Lankan newspapers that are extremely critical of the government, but I don’t see all these journalists being abducted, arrested, assaulted and killed. A few may have been arrested for perfectly legal reasons, and there is no proof that the government has abducted anyone. Shouldn’t the whole opposition be victimised or killed because they pose a challenge to Rajapaksa? What rubbish.

Even Mahanayakes who call for a convention to discuss democracy and good governance are threatened with being bombed in the Dalada Maligawa!

Only Ranil Wickremesinghe claims so. Who would really believe that Mahinda Rajapakse – who was given the honorary title of Sri Rohana Janaranjana by the Malwatte Mahanayake in 2000 thereby signalling the Buddhist establishment’s wish to see him become the president – would go and threaten the same Mahanayake to blow him up.

The Mahanayakes were rightfully angry that Sarath Fonseka was arrested for committing what really are minor crimes, while people like Karuna who had killed hundreds of Buddhist child-monks in Aranthalawa were given positions in the government.

This includes Sarath Fonseka, without whom the LTTE would not have been defeated. His supporters are being victimised, and the millions of people who voted for him are being called ‘traitors’.

The LTTE would have been defeated even if another commander like Shavendra Silva or Jagath Jayasuriya was in his position. Sarath Fonseka was a skillful soldier, but he was a mere functionary in the war machine. The war would not have been won if it wasn’t for the political leadership of Mahinda and Gotabaya, and even the Tamil diaspora knows that. That’s why the pro-LTTE parties overwhelmingly supported Fonseka. His supporters you speak of were the ones who were against the war, and claimed Fonseka was not even suitable for the leadership of the Salvation Army, and said that the army is going to Paman Kada not Alimankada (Elephant Pass) and that sort of thing.

If Rajapaksa manages to get a two-thirds majority in parliament by using intimidation and fraud, he will eliminate the last remnants of democracy in Sri Lanka.

Mahinda doesn’t need intimidation and fraud to win the election. Even a two-thirds majority sounds plausible given how fractured the opposition seems to be. If elected, he will ensure that peace, stability and prosperity prevail in Sri Lanka. As for democracy, just because you don’t like the way people vote doesn’t mean that Sri Lanka is not democratic.