No country in the world would permit a terrorist movement to reorganise by allowing them to obtain an electoral mandate in the name of democracy, and the armed forces victory over the LTTE was politically betrayed at the Northern provincial election, the Government’s hardline Sinhala coalition ally the Jathika Hela Urumaya said yesterday.

Minister Champika Ranawaka

Comparing the Tamil National Alliance mandate at last Saturday’s election to the German people’s overwhelming support for Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, JHU Minister Champika Ranawaka told a news conference that the Government must take responsibility for allowing the political front of a terrorist group to come to power through a free vote after terrorism and Tamil Nazism had been defeated with great difficulty.

“After Germany was defeated, the Allies politically banned the Nazi movement – what did we do? Months after the LTTE Leader was killed, we allowed people in the North to canvass for votes with his face on a poster,” Ranawaka charged.

Ranawaka said the JHU had urged tough action against the TNA when the party’s manifesto was unveiled because the party knew the Tamil party would construe a vote for them as an endorsement of its call for self-determination and self-rule.

“This is no different to what happened with the Vaddukoddai Resolution in 1977,” he said.

“In 1977, the TULF said based on the electoral mandate as a vote for the Vaddukoddai resolution and Eelam. After a few years, the Tamil youth asked, where is Eelam where is self determination? And then the TULF leaders like Amirthalingam had to run to Colombo and hide. Then India intervened and tried to create Eelam and then the country was pushed to war. In the end Amirthalingam and others also became victims of their guns,” the Minister charged.

He said TNA MP Abraham Sumanthiran and its Northern Chief Minister Elect C.V. Wigneswaran would meet the same fate.

“The game they have started today will ensure they meet the same fate as Amirthalingam and Yogeshwaran,” Ranawaka said.

Ranawaka scoffed at southern politicians who claimed the people of the North did not fall for carpet roads and a glass of arrack, claiming that the Northern voter was far more evolved. “There is no evolved society in the north. We are sad about the Tamil people – they still have the tribal mentality of the 1960s,” Ranawaka said.

He charged that people in the North did not have the freedom to vote according to conscience.

He accused UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay of interfering in the electoral process in the north. “The families of dead LTTE cadres are repeatedly told about war crimes and provoked. Navanethem Pillay went to the north and influenced the election. She gave a clear message to the LTTE families in the north. She told them she will carry their message to the world – she asked them to stand strong here. That became a major impediment to hold a free and fair election in the north,” he said.

Ranawaka said the TNA had increased its votes by some 330 percent at this election compared with 2010. In 2010 TNA got 65,000 votes in Jaffna. This time they have received 239,000 votes in Jaffna and the UPFA vote base has been reduced, the JHU strongman said.

“In 2010 the TNA wasn’t even able to get 50 percent of the vote. So who did this for them now? How did the same TNA that got only one third of this vote in 2010 one year after the war, get this amount of votes now?” Ranawaka queried.

He charged that foreign elements had secured the TNA’s victory at last week’s poll.

“Foreign forces that have now prevented the north and south from cooperating by getting them this mandate and doing this politics. The chief responsibility for this must be borne by the Indian Government. They have provoked Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka by sending the message that India is standing by,” the JHU Minister accused.

India always plays this same game whenever Tamil nationalism is dying out he charged. “India keeps giving Tamil nationalism new leases of life when it is dying in Sri Lanka,” he said. This is what has happened all over again now, Minister Ranawaka said.

“Any reconciliation and peace that was happening in 2010 has been stalled by this vote. Separatism and nationalism had gone backwards in 2010. It is the Indian Government, Tamil Nadu and Western lobby that has brought this back. The message is that the whole world is behind the Eelam project. It was with this strength at their backs that they spoke at this election. These forces have to take responsibility for bringing extremism back,” the Government Minister said.