SUNDAY PUNCH 2
relieved of their incomes by an artful dodge that lacked legitimacy until and unless Parliament approved it retrospectively and gave it the required legal base, the Government had assumed that no one, least of all a member of the previous government, would now rise to rock the boat but would acquiesce in this deviation from procedure which they themselves had practised, without petitioning the supreme court for a ruling.
Once the first sluice gate had been opened by previous governments and the then opposition did not deem it fit to move the Supreme Court against this breach, the practised had continued unabated with the present government picking up the baton from where the Rajapaksa regime had left it.
The Finance Minister’s statement in Parliament that it had been the practice followed in the past with none objecting, cannot hold water for the repeated practice of following faulty procedure cannot remedy the defect and render the practice legal merely because no one had protested. Isn’t it paramount that Parliament members must be the first to observe to the letter, all the laws that Parliament makes?
On the same basis, there were many instances during the Rajapaksa era where tender procedures were not followed. Does it give a right to the present government, especially one wedded to the Yahapalana doctrine, to ignore legal requirements and do away with tender procedure altogether now
Much blood -- one common human blood which knows no racial divisions -- has flowed for the last thirty years to stain the land indelibly. No amount of pseudo tears shed can cleanse its grievous blot on the landscape.
The Tamils have attributed the rise of terrorism and the emergence of Prabhakaran and his Tiger cadres to the perceived failure of Sinhala governments to grant redress to their ‘justified grievances’.
The Sinhala majority has, on the other hand, held that the Tamils, after enjoying British patronage till independence, were only complaining the loss of their privileged status as the pampered stooges of a colonial power; and perceived that if, in the course of satisfying the liberated Sinhala masses’ demand after independence for their long denied rights and privileges as the majority race to be restored, the Tamils had perforce been left with a smaller piece of the national cake they should make do with it; and accept it as their destined lot given their minority status.
The abject failure of both claimants, both dictated to by their own perceptions and both motivated by self-interest, to compromise led to the thirtyyear-long terrorist war, the untold horrors of which need not be recounted herein, for it is still fresh in the memory of those who survived the gruesome ordeal.
All that need be said is that with the fall of the Tiger leader by the banks of the Nandikadal lagoon in May 2009 simultaneously followed by the successful annihilation of his fighting force, there emerged throughout the land a consensus among all reasonable men that the country could not afford to live through another harrowing war. Even the jubilant Sinhalese, apart from the political leadership who gloated over the victory ad nauseam seeking sole kudos for their own mean political gain, had to contain their celebrations upon discovering the price of peace which would henceforth have to be met if they wished to savour its fruit.
The realisation dawned, even as the dove flew free, that, if the May 18 triumph was not to be a pyrrhic victory, if it were not to see a disfigured, warring phoenix rise from the ashes, the scattered embers speckled in the heart, still smouldering in the cinders, had to be doused permanently with the spring waters of understanding to foster mutual trust and concord.
A peace gained in our time with so much sacrifice, peace that endures for our progeny to enjoy had to be built on the