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UNDER FEDERAL SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT A PROVINCIAL FEDERAL STATE CANNOT HAVE DIFFERENT ARMED FORCES, SAY CRITICS REGARDING LTTE’S INSISTENCE OF MAINTAINING THEIR OWN ARMY By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles The London based LTTE organ, the Tamil Guardian proudly published this picture of what they claimed as howitzer batteries used by their militia. Their insistence, that their heavily armed forces should remain part of the federal state they propose has raised many questions about their sincerity about agreeing to settle for federalism (caption by Walter Jayawardhana) The insistence of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that they should have permanent armed forces in the future has been cited as the main conflict with their newly declared policy of accepting a federal structure of government in place of separatism. It has been pointed out that nowhere on the globe a nation having a federal government existed with two armed forces, of different loyalties. Critics have alleged the LTTE has increased their armed forces by three-fold with the active or passive support of the government since Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe signed a Memorandum of Understanding with LTTE Supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran. The LTTE is now publicly maintaining an Army, Navy and Air Force with the army having heavy artillery units, the photographs of which have been already published in the main organ of the group, The Tamil Guardian. Anton Balasingham has always evaded the question whether under a newly created federal system of government the armed terrorist group would ever give up arms. He said, “ The question does not arise. We have renounced violence under the ceasefire agreement.” The terrorist group who has never faced an election since its very inception maintained that they kept the army for the protection of the Tamil people. A lecturer of political science in the Colombo University, Dayan Jayatileke said that nowhere in the world a federal government was having more than one army. “If the LTTE is allowed to have their own armed forces it would not be a federal system of government. It would be a federal structure only in name,” he said. Then the question arises whether they want to have a federal government or Tamileelam itself, he added. Dayan Jayatileke further said, in the world under federal systems provincial states could have different police forces and even different systems of legal systems. But never different armed forces, he insisted. The introduction of any federal system in Sri Lanka would lead the North of the country to secede as a pure Tamil racist state warned the Most Venerable Madihe Pannasiha, the Mahanayaka Thero of the Amarapura Maha Nikaya at a conference held at the Jayewardene Cultural Center in Colombo, November 18. (EOM) (02/12/08 go2lanka.com)

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