SANITIZING WIGNESWARAN THE POLITICIAN
We have among ourselves many political commentators who once upon a time advocated appeasement of Pirapakaran via his ISGA and PTOMS proposals. Some of those characters have surfaced again in the media full of paeans of praise for former Justice Wigneswaran now in new avatar as TNA politician.
As such he is now in the public domain, and therefore is open to scrutiny by the public, no matter his impeccable pedigree as proclaimed by his devoted admirers. Being allergic to and suspicious of all politicians, I have a couple of questions for politician Wigneswaran.
One of the great lies propagated abroad by the TNA is that Tamils in Sri Lanka are discriminated against and treated as second class citizen. Mr. Wigneswaran now has the duty to put a stop to this Goebellesian lie. He is the living example of a First Class Sri Lankan Citizen notwithstanding the fact that he is a born Tamil in a supposedly virulent and discriminating Sinhala society! He is not the only one. There are in fact many Tamils like him who have ascended the pinnacle of our society in numerous professions. Good luck to them all and I wish them all future prosperity too in their lives. How can this be possible if Tamils have been subject to discrimination, oppression and suppression? Therefore I call upon Mr. Wigneswaran, the-supposed-to-be-honest-politician to tell the world how he became a First Class Citizen in the discriminating Sinhala society. Will he respond? Is it not the fact that our society, with all its faults, does provide the opportunity for anyone to climb the social ladder if he has the talent, drive and the earnestness to get to the top of the ladder in whatever profession of his choice?
TNA and its allies often demand that our security forces should face accountability and justice for many civilian deaths. The decimation of thousands of children recruited by force by the LTTE to fight in the front-line had been buried in the TNA dust-bin. We need accountability in this case too, not only from the LTTE but also from all those who acted as accessories and collaborators with this pogrom of the innocents. TNA has yet to wash its hands clean of this heinous crime. Will politician Wigneswaran, a former Justice of the Supreme Court, do justice by those innocents now dead and forgotten? Mind you we cannot forget the thousands of Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese slaughtered by LTTE at various times using the most diabolical means of suicide bombs. Will justice be done to them all by the former Justice Wigneswaran, now turned politician?
While still a Judge of the Supreme Court he had allegedly expressed opinions to the effect that the “majority of those in the Northern and Eastern Provinces were always Tamil Speaking until independence” (The Island Ist Apr.2001). The use of the word “always” in the above sentence is an attempt to justify the Homeland theory. The Tamils did not exist “always” in the north and the east nor were the people existing there speak Tamil “always”. His opinion is contradicted by a Tamil Professor of History—Karthigesu Indrapala—in his essay on Early Tamil Settlements in Ceylon, in the Royal Asiatic Society Journal, 1970. While leaving him to sort out his defective historical knowledge, I am, of course, concerned that Mr. Wigneswaran seems to be nurturing the ambition, like many of his TNA colleagues, to found Eelam via the Northern Provincial Council. Will he deny this? Will he tell his Tamil voters that he too will take them on the disastrous road to Eelam like Pirapakaran and ruin their lives and that of their descendants once again? Will he make his Eelam ambition public before his obligatory pilgrimage to pay obeisance to, and obtain instructions from the Brahamins in Delhi and Chennai? The Sri Lankans have a right to know his political objectives before they cast their votes for him. He is cooing like a dove now, will he become a growling Tiger looking for the jugular of the unitary Sri Lanka after he attains power? I remain deeply suspicious of this man, though he was an exemplary judge of our Supreme Court. We Sri Lankans are in for very hard times once again because the mindset of the Tamil politicians has not changed from separatist Eelam.
