Bleeding heart liberals and Tiger supporters will continue to see the LTTE in a sympathetic light despite all the killings they have perpetrated under the cover of the Ceasefire Agreement. But now it has come to a point where the Army Commander has been forced by sheer might of evidence against such violations, to tell that gloves are off and his men will hit back at Tigers if targeted, for in Trincomalee alone there have been a number of attacks on police and military targets within a matter of 24 hours.
It is unfortunate that the Norwegians, who are tasked with being the facilitators of peace, failed from the very start of the CFA to impress upon the LTTE that no targeted assassinations will be tolerated, especially if their designation as a terrorist organization is to remain lifted permanently. But instead the facilitators and everyone else merely turned a blind eye and carried on with the task of engaging the LTTE in civilized ways, hoping the Tigers will eventually stop. Now it has been proved beyond any doubt that we have all been taken for a ride.
The TNA also should stop blindly defending the LTTE. It is time it asked itself what results have been brought by appeasing the LTTE in this manner. Their’s and the Tigers stock excuse for killing more than 400 civilian opponents and over 50 intelligence operatives is that it is the failure of the Sri Lanka police to maintain law and order in government controlled areas. But when a few Tiger operatives are targeted they all come out like crybabes making all types of accusations against the security establishments.
At least now it may not be too late for the Norwegians to stop mollycoddling the LTTE and tell them where to get off. So enough of Norwegians and others playing up the LTTE threat to go back to war if they don’t get something. For we have done quite a bit in lifting its terrorist tag unilaterally, signing the CFA and ignoring its repeated violations and now the granting of the P-TOMS. So it is time that the LTTE showed some of its bona fides, especially by stopping targeted assassinations.
Graduates, ask now what you can do
Sri Lankan Arts graduates generally being unsuitable for employment is no doubt a fault of the system. Yet they must be thankful to the authorities for somehow employing them in the state sector.
Nowhere in the world, except perhaps in the few remaining Communist states, that any one is guaranteed employment? So we would like to ask these graduates whether it is fair for them to make all types of fresh demands from the state. Surely now you are on your own feet, unlike many others who are less fortunate than yourselves, and have got no such job bonanza from any one. On Wednesday, such graduates recruited in 1999, protested in front of the Education Ministry demanding among other things an opportunity to enter the teaching service, a chance to get transferred to other public service sectors, where there are promotions and to add their training period to their service. Surely many of you were employed by the state, in the first place, because no one else wanted to employ you. We feel, like many people in this country, it is time that you improved your knowledge and skills and on your own looked for better jobs instead of waiting for the state to spoon feed you any further.
Sometimes it is true that many of you are not employed in any capacity in the private sector due to pure snobbery by those who are holding reins in that sector. They have such a colonial hang up that they want to be more British than the British, so if someone does not speak good English, that person is needlessly shut out of the system or simply, literally laughed off, even though capability-wise the rejected person might be as good or better than many of their existing employees. So as long as such bigotry remains in this country, we certainly will not keep pace with other countries even in our own region.
(http://www.dailymirror.lk/2005/07/15/edit.asp)
