Former Shotgun Terrorists Duck & Dive to Protect Their Seats

"Former shotgun terrorists duck and dive to protect their seats and their opportunism on British High Commissioner’s comments questioned."

(December, 16, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Unpredictable Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) was exposed of dilly dally dancing during the budget debates and voting. It had the determination to harp on the government over its financial mismanagement of the country throughout even to the extent of voting against the budget in the first round.

When it came to the third reading, its position was no different in attacking the government, but decided to support it by playing the game of abstaining from voting. For delivering its honourable service, it had received all the praise from the government. The government praised JVP’s last minute ditch as sacred and even the President Rajapakse brother Basil has been highly placed for masterminding the JVP summersault.

Lots of manoeuvring had taken place when President who is the Finance Minister was on an international entourage from Japan to the United Kingdom. There are talks that a deal involving financial rewards and government positions had been struck with the JVP to obtain their abstention from voting. Sri Lanka Muslim Congress making the public announcement and leaving the government on army occupation of lands in the East was sufficient for the government to rope the JVP to its side in the last round of voting on the 14th.

JVP is a former terrorist outfit that used shotguns to kill the security forces and its opponents during two of its messy uprisings that brought the southern politics into much calamity. At its virtual elimination by the government forces, it decided to enter the political mainstream and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga Bandaranayake brought them to the political limelight for opportunistic reasons to outsmart the opposition United National Party.

The former shotgun terrorists do not have a political vision or ideological commitment to remove the serious hurdles facing Sri Lanka. It is a party that hates the minority Tamil and the Muslim population and use the slogan of defeating terrorism to camouflage its underlying hate against these communities.

It will go on the offensive when anyone making wide ranging and objective comments about Sri Lanka, critical of all aspects of its performance as a nation. It is nostalgic to anyone making rational statements about the Tamil problem. In its naturally evolved shotgun terror fashion, it went on to attack the British High Commissioner Dominic Chilcott for his objective analysis about Sri Lanka. If the British High Commissioner had singularly attacked the Tamil people or the northern terror outfit the LTTE or even praised the human rights record of the Sri Lankan government the shotgun JVP would have praised him as a true friend of Sri Lanka and made arrangements for more public engagements for him to tell its favourable story. It would not have seen the High Commissioner meddling in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka.

The JVP’s summersault is also said to be due to its opposition to face a general election, as it fears that it will loose some of its southern seats if an election is held immediately.