{"id":125051,"date":"2014-05-25T00:01:19","date_gmt":"2014-05-24T18:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=125051"},"modified":"2014-06-02T03:54:06","modified_gmt":"2014-06-01T22:24:06","slug":"missing-a-trick-and-showing-a-slip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/missing-a-trick-and-showing-a-slip\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing A Trick And Showing A Slip"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Malinda Seneviratne<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Malinda<\/a>

Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n

President Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a> did not invite seemingly estranged leaders of coalition partners such as Champika Ranawaka<\/a> and Wimal Weerawansa<\/span><\/a> to accompany him to the swearing-in ceremony of newly elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 He did not invite his Prime Minister or any other seniors in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t even invite the Leader of the Opposition, Ranil Wickremesinghe<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Instead, President Rajapaksa invited<\/span><\/a> the Chief Minister of the Northern Provincial Council to accompany him to Delhi.\u00a0 Wigneswaran declined.<\/p>\n

The context is important. Wigneswaran\u2019s party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) spares no opportunity to run to Delhi to whine and dine.\u00a0 In fact the TNA fired off a congratulatory message to Mr Modi no sooner the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) won the election, expressing hope (yet once again) that Delhi would interfere on behalf of the TNA (to exact from Rajapaksa \u2018peacefully\u2019 what Velupillai Prabhakaran<\/span><\/a> failed to obtain through terrorism).<\/p>\n

Wigneswaran<\/span><\/a> has trotted out the lamest of excuses and in doing so has conceded all brownie points at stake to the President.\u00a0 Wigneswaran claims that had he accepted the invitation\u00a0 it would \u2018give a false impression to the international community that the Northern PC<\/span><\/a> and the Central Government had a strong relationship\u2019.\u00a0 The international community, so-called, was not born yesterday and Wigneswaran ought to have known this.\u00a0 Worse, this \u2018back-off\u2019 only \u2018shows-off\u2019 Wigneswaran and the TNA.<\/p>\n

Wigneswaran is but a leader of a province and can claim to speak for less than a third of the Tamils living in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 As such, there is little grace in tossing aside a presidential invite.\u00a0 If only it was just that and nothing else! The truth is that Wigneswaran, the invitation-decliner, veritably salivates when receiving invitations from close associates of Prabhakaran now domiciled in various parts of Europe and North America.<\/p>\n

As for relationships with the center, strong or otherwise, their status has a lot to do with who Wigneswaran\u2019s friends are and what he chooses to be blind to.\u00a0 There are definite moves to resurrect the LTTE and the TNA\u2019s conspicuous silence on this clearly indicates tacit approval.\u00a0 In that context it is certainly generous of the President to put all that aside and invite Wigneswaran to accompany him.<\/p>\n

It appears that Wigneswaran would rather toe the LTTE line than help promote goodwill with the entities that disgruntled sections of the Tamil community would ultimately have to deal with, in this instance represented by the President.\u00a0 He might think \u2018I snubbed him,\u2019 but in reality he has indicated that reconciliation of any kind is anathema to the TNA, a red flag to a bull so to speak.<\/p>\n

All things considered this is pretty puerile on the part of the former Supreme Court Judge.\u00a0 It would appear to some that this is a clear indication of who really controls the Wigneswaran and the TNA: pro-LTTE extremists in expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil community and their local representative, the true leader of the TNA by default, Suresh Premachandran.<\/p>\n

The quick slide to political redundancy has to be seen as mirroring a pandering to extremists by an earlier generation led by Appapillai Amirthalingam and the TULF.\u00a0 Wigneswaran knows how that story played itself out.\u00a0 Perhaps it is too late. Perhaps he has no choice.<\/p>\n

Whatever the truth may be, one thing is clear.\u00a0 The President got to look magnanimous and Wigneswaran turned up looking a spoiler.\u00a0 Modi didn\u2019t invite Wigneswaran.\u00a0 He invited Rajapaksa, scoffing at those who protested the move.\u00a0 Someone has missed a trick here and it is not Mahinda Rajapaksa.<\/p>\n

*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":105560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nMissing A Trick And Showing A Slip - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/missing-a-trick-and-showing-a-slip\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Missing A Trick And Showing A Slip - Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[…]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/missing-a-trick-and-showing-a-slip\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-05-24T18:31:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-06-01T22:24:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"130\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"135\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/missing-a-trick-and-showing-a-slip\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/missing-a-trick-and-showing-a-slip\/\",\"name\":\"Missing A Trick And Showing A Slip - 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