News reports irk Rajapaksa in Jaffna

 SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa visiting Jaffna and ‘celebrating’ Pongkal on Monday reacted to media reports that pointed out his ‘conspicuous silence’ about an aid he was politically capitalising. Meanwhile, the SL president who is coupling a terror campaign with his campaign for a colonial polity, ‘celebrating’ a Tamil agrarian festival in military occupied Jaffna, spending millions of rupees and intimidating people to attend it, while the agricultural lands of the Tamil country are seriously deluged in the floods making hundreds of thousands homeless, was nauseating to the public, media sources in Jaffna said. But addressing along with Rajapaksa, the SL minister and the ‘host’ of the event, Douglas Devananda declared that “today the polity of collaboration is on its victorious march.”

17_01_11_jaffna_01_91581_445 Provoked by media reports on his complete silence about the British aid to a bridge he was inaugurating Sunday, Mahinda Rajapaksa said that these media fail to see what takes place in the country.

"These media fail to see that it is we [Rajapaksa regime] who construct all these on loans and that we have to pay back. I will never hesitate to borrow money if it is to develop the country," Rajapaksa said.

“When we declare open a causeway bridge, it becomes a bridge built under foreign aid for some media, and if we construct houses to resettle people, such houses are seen as being built under foreign loans by these media that refuse to see things that take place in the country," Rajapaksa further said.

It was unusual for Rajapaksa not to thank a foreign aid as was in the case of the bridge, Sunday.

Rajapaksa who was celebrating Thaip-pongkal in Jaffna, two days after the festival, with the name given as ‘Sooriyap-pongkal’ unusual to Eezham Tamil usage, a few days ago visited the flood-affected Sinhala districts, but not the worst hit Eastern Province of the Tamil country.

Characteristic of the visits of SL bigwigs to Jaffna nowadays and in continuation of the ongoing terror campaign allegedly by the occupying forces and collaborators, the wife of a Hindu temple priest standing at her house with her family was fired at and was seriously injured in Maanippaay in Jaffna on Monday, while Rajapaksa was on his campaign.

Coming out with a veiled threat, Rajapaksa characterised those who tarnish the image of his government in the South as well as in the North as ‘mafia’. He vowed to defeat and destroy this mafia the ‘same way’ he had defeated ‘terrorists.’

“Nobody could survive in separation” was the only message from him about any political solution.

Equal footing between Tamils and others is possible only in ‘development’, he said.

Pointing at Mr. Vinayagamoorthy of TNA and Vijayakala Maheswaran of UNP and Douglas Devananda of EPDP, seated at the stage besides him as examples, Rajapaksa urged all Tamils to get united and come.

He thanked Douglas Devananda for hosting the event and urged him to act as a minister for the whole island, not limiting his focus only to Jaffna.

However, in the wake of the escalated abductions in the North in recent times, Mr. Devananda found himself in a situation to clear him by openly requesting his guest, the SL president, to release those who have been ‘taken’ without harming them.

17_01_11_jaffna_05_91597_200 He was referring to the recently abducted in the terror campaign in the North. Informed circles in Colombo say that such killings and abductions are directed by a top person none other than Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and the targeted could hardly come back alive.

Devananda also had to defend himself for organising the event, which he preferred to call ‘thanksgiving’ to the SL president ‘for defeating those who were engaged in violence in the name of Tamil rights’. He spent a lot of time in explaining why the event was necessary even at the time when the East was deluged in floods.

Devananda said that he would give a personal guarantee for the SL president implementing the 13th Amendment, once the Provincial Council elections are over in the North. The violence-makers had spoiled the Indo-Lanka agreement in the past, he said.

“I’nakka arasiyal vettinadai poaduki’rathu” (collaborative polity is having its victorious march), the SL minister of the collaborative paramilitary cum political party, EPDP, said at the event.

He said that his brand of politics is the productive one, and India, the opposition parties and even the West support his line of politics.

Emotions and protests will not work; only collaboration could work he further said.

Observers said that the event, spending millions of rupees, was aimed at the forthcoming local body elections, soon expected provincial council elections and at showcasing the subjugation ability of the regime to the outside world.

Compared to Sunday’s bridge-inauguration for which the local journalists were not allowed, for Monday’s event the EPDP paramilitary permitted local journalists after screening them thoroughly.

Many among the audience at the event were forcibly brought. A large number of them were school children and their teachers.

Some were invited that they would be honoured for their services. But no such felicitation took place.

[Full Coverage]

(For updates you can share with your friends, follow TNN on Facebook and Twitter )