TAMIL NET has reported that a Colombo district Tamil parliamentarian of the opposition United National Party, T Maheswaran, was shot at Ponnambala Va’neasvarar temple at Kochchikkadai in Colombo on Tuesday at around 10.00am.
He was shot while he was paying homage at the shrine, and succumbed to his injuries at Colombo hospital.
The shooting, which also claimed the life of his bodyguard, comes a few hours after the parliamentarian had said that he would reveal details on how abductions and killings in Jaffna are managed by the Sri Lankan establishment through the EPDP paramilitary, from Colombo.
Eleven days ago, the government of Sri Lanka had reduced the Ministerial Security Division guards provided to the MP from 18 to two.
Twelve devotees were wounded when gunmen shot at the parliamentarian who was attending the New Year prayers at the popular Siva temple in Colombo.
Thiyagarajah Maheswaran who was a former Hindu Affairs minister and an ex-MP for Jaffna, escaped an assassination attempt on the final day of the 2004 election campaign in Colombo.
Recently, on 21 December, a UNP candidate, Muthukumar Sivapalan, was shot and killed in Jaffna, allegedly by the EPDP.
The paramilitary-cum-political party, EPDP, is led by Douglas Devananda, a cabinet minister in the present Sri Lanka government.
Maheswaran was highly critical about the paramilitary outfit in his latest interviews to Tamil media in Colombo and had claimed that he would reveal details on how the terror campaign in Jaffna was being managed from Colombo by the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) through the EPDP.
He had told Shakti TV’s popular Minnal programme that he would come up with in-depth details of the terror campaign when the parliament resumes its sittings.
Another Tamil parliamentarian in Colombo, Mano Ganesan, the leader of the Western Province Peoples Front (WPPF) and the convener of the Civil Monitoring Committee, whose security was also slashed by the GoSL, has recently said he was left with no other option than leaving Sri Lanka as the lives of Tamil parliamentarians have been endangered by the reduction of security provided to them.
Two years ago, a senior Tamil politician and the Tamil National Alliance Member of Parliament, Joseph Pararajasingham, was shot and killed at St Mary’s co-cathedral church in Batticaloa city, while attending Christmas prayers on the night of Christmas eve.
One year ago, a lawyer turned politician and former mayor of Jaffna, Nadarajah Raviraj, the Jaffna district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP, was assassinated in Colombo on November 10, 2006.
Meanwhile, in the backdrop of the Mahina Rajapaksa Government announcing local government elections in the Batticaloa district, three Tamil paramilitary-cum-political parties, the EPDP, PLOTE, EPRLF (Naba wing) and the yet-to-be-registered TMVP of Pilayan’s group revealed that they had reached an agreement to form an electoral alliance after a meeting summoned at the Batticaloa office of the EPDP last Saturday.
A spokesperson of the paramilitary coalition told media that although the four outfits had agreed on principle, the final decision would be taken after consultations with their respective leaders and key operatives.
In an interview with the BBC Tamil Service on Sunday, R Thurairatnam, the person-in-charge of the EPRLF (Naba wing) in the Eastern Province and a key member of the outfit, said ‘due to a situation of compulsion created by a joint resolution’, passed by the four outfits functioning in Batticaloa, they were compelled to agree ‘in principle’ to jointly contest the elections.
His choice of words clearly hinted at the divisions that exist between the groups and point out that the compulsion arises from an external source.
The announcement by the paramilitary groups is further corroborated by Maithripala Srisena, general secretary of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in his interview to the Sinhala daily ‘Lankadeepa’ where he proclaimed that all the political parties associated with the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) have agreed to contest as a single front in the forthcoming local government elections for the nine local bodies in the East.
The claim by Srisena clearly indicated that the plan of consolidating the paramilitaries to contest as a single coalition group in Batticaloa was formulated by the GoSL and thrust upon the armed groups under its control.
Further, the Election Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake, who is yet to approve the TMVP as a political party, announced recently that arrangements would be made to approve newly formed parties.
Elections to 45 local government bodies in the districts of NorthEast, were postponed by the Election Commissioner in March 2006 based on reports that the ground situation was not conducive for holding polls.
R Thurairatnam, the EPRLF (Naba wing) spokesperson, also told BBC that in the particular case of Batticaloa, a fair election has not been held for a long time.
All the polls, including parliamentary elections in the district, were held amidst armed violence.
According to him, the district presently witnesses abductions, robberies, human rights violations, and armed groups killing each other, and the current environment is not conducive for elections. ‘However, we are not going to withdraw from contesting in the elections,’ he said.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), the only Muslim opposition party (within and outside the parliament) has said that the proposed elections in early 2008 were not going to be fair elections as far as the Muslims were concerned. Rauf Hakeem, SLMC leader and parliamentarian said that the election move was a dishonest drama staged by the GoSL to rob the votes of Tamils and Muslims.
With the security for the members of parliament significantly reduced by the GoSL, it would be difficult to undertake election campaigns because of the threat posed by the armed groups operating in the East, added Hakeem.
Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government is set to experiment with a rehearsal to examine the possibilities of bringing a paramilitary ‘coalition’ politics into the Sri Lankan Parliament. It is also believed that posting Maj. Gen. Jammika Liyanage, who was the Director of Military Intelligence (DMI), as the Eastern Commander is a strategic manoeuvre to overcome the challenge of tackling the paramilitaries in forging a paramilitary political coalition.
In these circumstances, it is obvious that Colombo craves to maintain military rule and preserve its structure and administration in the East by staging the farce of elections.
It is widely feared that the eyewash of an election will also set the stage to the SLA (Sri Lankan Army) and the SLA-backed paramilitaries for weeding out ‘unwanted persons’ in the Batticaloa district.
Meanwhile, concerned citizens express fear that Batticaloa may once more become a killing field in another election drive.
