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The official pointed out that GTF spokesperson Suren Surendiran had credited those countries, including India which voted against Sri Lanka for compelling Sri Lanka to call for Northern PC polls. Nothing could be further from the truth, the official said, adding that formation of separate Provincial Councils for the Eastern and Northern Provinces wouldn’t have been a reality as long as the LTTE retained its conventional military capability. People of the Eastern Province had an opportunity to elect their first Provincial Council in May 2008 at the height of the combined security f
orces offensive in the Vanni against the LTTE, the official said, alleging those supportive of Prabhakaran’s macabre cause strongly opposed Eastern PC polls.
Northern PC polls too, wouldn’t have been a reality in case the government called off the Vanni offensive due to international pressure.
The GoSL spokesperson said that the then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his French counterpart wouldn’t have visited Colombo in April 2009 to save the LTTE without intervention by LTTE-run Tamil Diaspora groups. But interestingly, the GTF hadn’t been formed at that time, the official said, claiming that many Tamil organizations, including the GTF as well as the so-called Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) came into being only after the eradication of the LTTE.
Now that Surendiran had thanked India for ‘a little bit of arms twisting’ to compel Sri Lanka to call for Northern PC polls, the GTF should examine the circumstances under which the Indian Army facilitated the victory of the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) at the first North-East Provincial Council election on November 19, 1988.
India went to the extent of forming a private army for the EPRLF administration, the official said, accusing the likes of Surendiran of misrepresenting facts. In fact, India should be really concerned about the statement attributed to Surendiran, he said.
The government spokesperson said that the Tamil Diaspora and the TNA should be grateful to President Rajapaksa’s government for giving them an opportunity to freely engage in politics. The official recalled the TNA, on behalf of the LTTE, calling upon Tamil speaking people to boycott presidential election in November 2005.
In the run-up to Dec 2001 parliamentary polls, the TNA had to declare the LTTE as the sole representatives of Tamil speaking people, the official said, adding that the TNA was not even allowed to decide on its candidates. It would be pertinent to mention that a comprehensive report by an EU election monitoring mission released following the parliamentary polls exposed a direct nexus between the LTTE and the TNA, he said.
The EU report examined how the TNA had benefited from a violent campaign carried out by the LTTE in the run-up to the polls and the polling day itself, the official said.
"Let me remind Surendiran that he functions as GTF spokesman only because the LTTE lost the war. That is the reality," the official said.
Dismissing Surendiran claim of colonization of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the official challenged the GTF to reveal specific cases without generalizing. The GTF with the help of the TNA should be able to pinpoint exact locations where new settlers had moved in since the conclusion of the conflict.
In fact, when similar sentiments were expressed by a visiting Indian parliamentary delegation recently, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa asked the delegates whether they could pinpoint at least one such settlement in the Northern region, the official said.
The official said that a forthcoming census would reveal the true ground situation. Slowly but steadily the GTF and the TGTE were losing ground due to rapid progress in the post-war development programme.
Commenting on the GTF’s endorsement of Wigneswaran as the TNA’s chief ministerial candidate, the government spokesman said that the diaspora as well as some of those countries wanting to haul Sri Lanka up before an international war crimes tribunal remained silent when the LTTE was running the show.
They turned the other way when the LTTE quit the Norwegian-led negotiating process in April 2003, thereby setting the stage for Eelam War IV in mid 2006. Those shedding crocodile tears for Tamil speaking people never voiced their concerns as long as they felt the LTTE could achieve its objective militarily.
They hadn’t been the least bothered about using children as cannon fodder, the official said. Whatever those living abroad say, saving children from the horrors of war would be enough for the government to win the election if the people were truly grateful.
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