Courtesy: Daily News
Professor Carlo Fonseka explains why the Tamil community should vote for President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Presidential Elections on January 26. President Rajapaksa has the wish, desire, capacity and the public support necessary to grant maximum possible relief in regard to devolution of power to the Tamil people. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is the only frontline Sinhalese political leader who talks to the Tamil people in the Tamil language. In fact, he was the first to speak in Tamil at the UN General Assembly.
Following is the interview our staff reporter M. P. Muttiah had with Professor Fonseka.
Question: You are a well-known personality and your Party the LSSP is with the Government. The world knows that you are an enthusiastic supporter of the present regime. Could you tell us why you would vote for the incumbent President? What is the reason?
Answer: The main reason to vote for President Mahinda Rajapaksa is that he has given leadership to the Forces which ended the war that lasted for 30 years. The war itself resulted from the unwise, unjust way in which the Tamil speaking people in the country were treated by Sinhalese leaders in the post-independent period after 1948.
Professor Carlo Fonseka
The Tamil people have inhabited this country, especially its Northern part for many centuries. They have preserved a language, a religion and a culture of their own. Therefore, they have a right to a measure of self-governance. This right was denied to them by successive governments. As a last resort a section of the Tamil youth took up arms to fight for their rights.
Unfortunately and unwisely they believed that they had a right to a separate Tamil State in the North and East occupying one-third of the land of the country. This was very unrealistic and could not possibly have been obtained by negotiation. So they fought a vicious war that killed all those who opposed their vision of Tamil Eelam, including moderate Tamils like my friend Dr. Neelan Thiruchelvam and Lakshman Kadirgamar, not to speak of my dear pupil Raajini Thiranagama.
So the separatist youth movement had to be eliminated and President Mahinda Rajapaksa achieved this objective. Today people can move about freely in most parts of the country. This achievement, I think, is enough reason for me and, I would argue, for every sensible person in our country to vote for Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Question: What do you think that the Tamil speaking people and Muslims should also vote for him?
Answer: Well, that is up to them. Who am I to advise other people how they should vote? After all we are born equal in dignity and with the capacity for judgment. So, the Tamil people should follow their own judgment in this matter. However, since you asked me for my opinion, I will give it for what it is worth. I can give two reasons why Tamil people should strongly consider voting for Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The first is that he has the wish, desire, capacity and the public support necessary to grant maximum possible relief in regard to devolution of power to the Tamil people. During the period of the bitter 30-year war, the mood of the people in the South was such that the majority opposed even minor concessions given to the Tamil people.
So, he knew it was a waste of time to talk of Tamil peoples’ rights during the period of the war. However, I know from personal knowledge that he was sympathetic to V. Anandasangaree’s proposal that Sri Lanka should adopt the Indian model of devolution of power with suitable adaptations.
By 2006 although Anandasangaree and his family had suffered severely at the hands of the LTTE. But he preached peace and non-violence. The UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Prize for Promoting Tolerance and Non-violence was awarded to Anandasangaree in 2006. President Mahinda Rajapaksa sent his warm congratulations to him through me.
He assured Ananadasangaree that after the vicious war is finished he will be in a position to discuss the proposals for a suitable package. Now that the war is over, I think that the Tamil people would be wise to rally round Anandasangaree who is perhaps the most respected senior Tamil political leader in the country today.
If I remember rightly the JHU offered to accommodate Anandasangaree on their National List of Parliamentarians. So the Tamil people should follow the advice of Anandasangaree because he is so acceptable even to the JHU.
Secondly, why I think Tamil people should seriously consider voting for President Mahinda Rajapaksa is that he is the only frontline Sinhalese political leader who talks to the Tamil people in the Tamil language. In fact, he was the first to speak in Tamil at the UN General Assembly.
He goes to the trouble of pleasing the Tamil people by speaking their language because he cares for their feelings. To learn to speak a new language when one is in one’s sixth decade is not easy. But President Mahinda Rajapaksa has made the effort and thereby he has set a good example. So I ask my Tamil friends in their own best interests to vote for him as President. I am sure that in his next term, the Tamil people will see a vast improvement in their quality of their lives and enjoyment of their rights.
Question: How do you think the unity of the people of this country could be best promoted?
Answer: For educated people of the older generation to which I belong, unity was always there because of the common language English.
For the present monolingual generation the achievement of emotional and intellectual unity with they also speak another language will be very difficult. We should begin the promotion of unity with our children through activities in sports, cultural festivals, travel and educational exercises.
Moreover, I believe there is no real enmity between Sinhalese and Tamils unlike between the Blacks and Whites and Hindus and Muslims that prevails in some other countries. We share so many things in common in matters of food, religion, language and culture that it is easy to promote goodwill among us.
In many teledramas at least such unity has been achieved. In the film called Alimankada made by Chandran Rutnam we see that even at the height of war, a Sinhalese young man and a Tamil young woman, who were intensely loyal to their respective ethnic groups could not work together and be together for very long without falling in love with each other.
That is, of course, fiction, but it is true to life. I am very optimistic about the future of unity in diversity among the various ethnic and language groups in our country. For this, we need a period of social stability. That social stability will be seriously compromised by a change of regime at this stage. So, for the sake of peace and social stability all people of goodwill, irrespective of ethnicity, religion and culture should vote for the continuation of the present regime.
http://www.dailynews.lk/2010/01/11/fea03.asp
