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Strange bedfellows and quagmired politics

Murkier and murkier politics becomes with the strangest of combinations and quixotic pacts dictated by political expediency, gloomier become the hopes of the Tamil people for the basic peace dividend and progress in the peace process for a negotiated settlement of the decades old conflict.

A presidential election on the horizon, contenders named though not officially, pacts entered into with the most unimaginable of entities, Mr.Citizen is in a quandry. Both say that they will turn heaven and earth to bring peace by continuing with the Cease Fir Agreement (CFA). CFA for that matter is liked very much by the Sinhala electorate because that is the insurance for the safety of poor Sinhala youths; no war and therefore no deaths. Rest of the lifestyle has no impact in the south and there is normalcy. So, vote for the face you like, hell with peace to the Tamil people.

Not so with the Tamil people. CFA is the instrument the Tamil people thought and were told that would redeem them from the morass five decades of discriminatory governance and two decades of war put them into. CFA in fact, is only ‘no war’ and three and a half years translated into dividends, is zero for the Tamil people. Exacerbating the situation is the callousness for Tamil concern the Sinhala polity exhibits when entering into unholy alliances with entities that have Tamil bashing alone on their credit side.

Tamil bashing of identified race haters on the one hand and the double talk pressidential candidates are engaged in, in justifying what they do, so to say, ‘yes, we are entering into pacts that speak of everything against Tamils, but we are for the CFA and the peace process. On the other hand, Tamil people have no alterrnative other than to ask of the international community for proper diagnosis of the political malady and prescribe the remedy.

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21 September 2005

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