By
Don Manu
When Northern Chief Minister Wigneswaran denounced last month the right of any Sinhalese to erect a Buddha statue in the north and east of Lanka and held it as a reprehensible assault on Tamil Eelam culture, perhaps he never realised how soon he would find, in the AAWA gangsters staunch comrades in arms willing to follow through his verbal denunciation with violence, both word and deed said and done in the name of protecting Jaffna culture.
Would he, at least now, denounce the existence of this new sword brandishing and culture ranting grouping that he may have unwittingly spawned with his racial and religious bigotry expressed in his ‘Eluha Thamil’ letter addressed to all Tamil-speaking people on the eve of September’s ‘Rise Tamils’ march? Or would he opt to wait till the cocky cubs are weaned from swords and graduate to the T- 56? Wait until the guns are turned on him? Even as TULF leader Appapillai Amirthalingam was to discover on that fateful night of July 13, 1989 at his safe house down Bullers Road, Colombo 7 when he was gunned down by a Tiger assassin after having tea and sandwiches with him?
Having now forsaken his judicial wig and gown for camouflage fatigues which blurs the distinction between the democratic politician and the rebel outcast, will he now publicly condemn armed groups taking the law unto their own hands and committing violence as they deem fit as Prabhakaran’s Tigers once did; and/or, in his belated search for Eelam martyrdom in his dotage, privately condone, even egg on, the emergence of such groups and endorse their actions as being indispensable in the quest for some utopian Tamil Eelam on Lanka soil?
As chief minister of the Northern Province, he should state his position unequivocally. Having taken the Sixth Amendment oath as a lawyer, a judge and a provincial council member, pledging to uphold and defend the Sri Lankan constitution; and swearing not to ‘directly or indirectly, in or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka,” he must demonstrate whether he is a man of honour who, having once sworn, stays true to his oath and keeps his word whatever the cost or whether he prostitutes his honour and that of his forefathers — the family heirloom of honour — for political expediency and is quick to renegade on his promises whenever the wind turns north?
Courtesy:Sunday Times