By Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe –

Ajit Rupasinghe

As we had repeatedly alerted, even at the very last moment, in the face of imminent defeat, incumbent president Mahinda Rajapaksa tried to make a grab to hold on to power. Civil defense forces loyal to the Regime were to be dressed up in regular army uniforms to storm the bastions of state power. Media institutions were to be brought under siege. The National Security Council was to be convened. Emergency and martial law was to be promulgated. Emergency session of Parliament was to be convened to legitimize the coup. The two most notorious, low-life thugs of the Rajapaksa cabal, Ministers S.B. Dissanayake and Wimalaya were desperately pushing the agenda. Chief of Staff of the armed forces Jagath Jayasuriya was ready to sing the song. Army commander, Daya Ratnayake was in jitters. Could the coup face the wrath of the masses was their collective dilemma. The Elections Commissioner and the Inspector General of Police took strength from the raging tide of opposition. They stood firm. So, the murdering crony mafia cabal capitulated. Mahinda hastened to retreat in the face of mass mobilization. He handed over power before even before the results were announced in the hope that he would be shown some mercy. In the desperate hope that he would not be brought to face the Tribunal of the People! He knew that if he would have dared to go against the masses and reject their verdict he, his triumvirate and dynasty, together with his corrupt, murdering, raping narco-cabal would perhaps have faced the same fate as Colonel Gaddafi. Some of the most notorious criminals, drug barons, rapists and racketeers fled the country with their kith and kin well before the fall. Wimalaya tried to flee, but was refused entry at the airport.

So, to whom does this tactical victory belong? Of course, the victory parades would be held in honor of the winner, the new Executive President, H.E. Maitripala Sirisena, along with Ranil Wickremesinghe, Madam Chandrika, Champika Ranawaka and General Sarath Fonseka. Yet, if there are any real winners in this game, it would be the oppressed and suffering masses who dared to take on the hated emperor to unseat him. The victory would belong particularly to the Tamil people in the North-East and the Hill Country and the Moslem people – the oppressed nationalities, who had faced the most terrible abuse, exploitation and terrorist repression under the rule of the Emperor. The Hill Country Tamil population are to be saluted for routing Thondaman, their most direct terrorist overlord and drunken enforcer.

However, any real victory for the people in this election would rest on whether the new dispensation would bring them justice. This would require that all corrupt politicians and officials, murderers, rapists and racketeers who had amassed fortunes under the Rajapakse Regime would be duly prosecuted and punished for their abominable crimes against the people and the country. It would require that all top bureaucrats in such infamous institutions as the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, the Urban Development Authority, Registration of Motor Vehicles, Customs, all Ministers and Secretaries, the Police and Armed Forces, private contractors and the whole litany of others that had killed democracy and human rights and robbed the people blind be brought before the Law to face justice. It would require that all high officials of the Judiciary and the Attorney General’s office that complied in entrenching the fascist Rajapakse dictatorship be brought before the Tribunal of Justice. It would require that the entire chauvinist-militarist-hegemonic State apparatus be dismantled forthwith and democratic institutions put in place. A system of public transparency and accountability would have to be instituted. The real victory for the people would lie in empowering their democratic rights so they may hold their political representatives and public officials effectively accountable and recallable. Most of all, a real victory for the people would lie in implementing a democratic political solution to the National Question, without any further prevarication or compromise. This is along with an immediate rescinding of the Prevention of Terroism Act (PTA) and the demilitarization of the North-East and throughout the country and granting full constitutional powers to the Northern Provincial Council.

Justice certainly would require that the cold-blooded assassins who are responsible for the killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge, Hon. Raviraj, Hon. Joseph Pararajasingham, the massacre of the aid workers, those responsible for the abduction of Prageeth Eknaligoda, Lalith, Kugan, all those guilty of war crimes and atrocities, and so many other such crimes be tried and punished. This is but a short list of such horrible crimes. All para-military fascist forces, including that of Douglas Devanada, the Bodu Bala Sena, Sinhala Ravaya be disarmed and served justice. Justice would require that the right of the people to information, their freedom of assembly, expression and conscience be immediately instituted. This would certainly include lifting of the block against Colombo Telegraph.

The new dispensation under H.E. Maitripala Sirisena shall be on public trial to ensure that Justice shall be done to the people. This is why the people voted him to power. They had no other choice. Unlike before, this time, the people are alerted to the real possibility that their democratic mandate be, once again, subverted and hijacked by the System and its ruling class. For sure, they will continue to be fed to the wolves of Capital and the country sold to the imperialist powers even more ruthlessly that before. This is the real agenda.

It would be the responsibility of the genuine progressive, democratic forces to build the independent power of the people to defend and advance their sovereignty, even within the prevailing neo-colonial Capitalist State, however illusory that may be. It is the sacred duty of all genuine revolutionaries to grasp this opening to build the united, organized conscious revolutionary will, strength and fighting capacity of the proletariat and the oppressed masses and nationalities in a common front of struggle against world imperialism and the neo-colonial State and direct the rising wave of class struggle towards the establishment of a People’s Democratic State, as a liberated base area of the world revolution, along the path of Socialism and the final victory of Communism.