'Their imagination is stuck at the 13th amendment'

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 January 2009, 11:50 GMT]
"All the authoritarians of the world joined hands shamelessly to abet the repulsive Colombo regime in crushing the democratic aspirations of a people to liberate their nation. When the authoritarians gleefully claim success they seem to have forgotten that there is now no excuse of the LTTE for them in coming out with a political solution proving their credentials of liberal democracy, if they practise that at all. But they seem to be having no vision at all other than poking their greedy fingers into the hot pie and their imagination of political solution is stuck at the 20 years old ‘Rajeev Rot’, the 13th amendment," said a Tamil political commentator in Colombo.

The visiting Japanese envoy Yasushi Akashi "underlined the importance of a political solution for a durable peace and urged President Mahinda Rajapasa to expedite the process of the all Party Conference in bringing about a amicable solution based on the 13th Amendment to the Constitution," reported Daily Mirror on Monday.

“The 13th Amendment may be of importance to Sonia Gandhi and to M. K. Narayanan to prove in brutal ways that Rajeev Gandhi and the Indian establishment were right. But Tamils, including the Indian sponsored former Chief Minister Varatharaja Perumal rejected it long back. Any talk of the 13th Amendment is not going to produce the desired atmosphere for the International Community to have peaceful business in the island. Rather they will only see a reenactment of the late 1980s and early 90s”, the political commentator said.

“Some major conditions had to be fulfilled before obtaining Japanese assistance – particularly law and order, safety and security of residence and aid workers”, Akashi told Colombo government according to Daily Mirror.

The Colombo based commentator reflected on the situation in the following words:

“The economic crisis of the Colombo government is going to put it at a worse situation in the current and forthcoming years than its war with the LTTE. Japan has long been a major donor of Colombo’s aid money”.

“If Japan and the International Community really aim for lasting peace in the island, they can very well boldly enact a political solution based on the democratic norm of the right to self-determination of Tamils. Getting bound by the petty limits set by the Indian Establishment is fruitful to no one, not even to the Sinhalese who didn’t make any headway with the Provincial Councils set by the 13th Amendment in the last two decades.”

“The Tamil diaspora and the people of Tamil Nadu, rather than vaguely demanding India and other countries to intervene in Sri Lanka should take care in specifying intervening for what.”

“The intervention demand itself could be orchestrated by elements of vested interests.”

“The focus of Tamils should now be on the recognition of the national question of Eezham Tamils and not allowing it to be blunted by the conspiracy of ‘pluralistic Sri Lankan Society’, which is just another form of the tyranny of majority.”

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