COUNTRY’S MAIN PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION UNP FAILS TO CONDEMN COWARDLY ACT OF COLOMBO’S SUCIDE BOMB BLAST
Thiagaraja Jeyarani ( Age - 26) A Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up inside a police station in the Sri Lankan capital on July 7 2004
By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles
July 08, 08.15 PM: The United National Party, the country’s main parliamentary opposition failed to condemn the cowardly act of the suicide bombing in two of its well thought out statements issued to the media after the suicide bomb blast at Colombo’s Kollupitiya Police station , July 7.
On behalf of the United National Party two statements were issued on the same day of the tragedy that ended four lives of police officers and the woman suicide bomber herself, but both statements failed to condemn the act.
In similar terrorist acts, it is common practice of all national leaders of any country , to vehemently condemn the act as sheer cowardice.
One statement was issued to the Sinhala daily The Divaina on behalf of the UNP by the Deputy Secretary General of the party and the District member of Parliament for the Kandy District, Tissa Attanayaka.
Failing to condemn the cowardly act Attanayaka basically praised party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe for working with the LTTE to bring about an era of no suicide bombs and blamed the United People’s Freedom Alliance government led by President Chandrika Kumaratunga for once again paving the way for bombs what he said, by weakening the peace process. But he did not exactly describe how it was weakened. The peace talks that were stalled during the regime of Ranil Wickremesinghe never were re-started.
The matinee-idol Ravindra Randeniya, who has now become the UNP’s spokesman, while speaking to the BBC’s Sinhala language program Sandeshaya also failed to condemn the bomb blast while speaking on behalf of the country’s main opposition party, UNP, now working closely in a united opposition with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), a proxy party of the main suspect of the suicide bomb blast, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Predicting ominous times for the country, the cinema star turned politician Randeniya said the Ranil Wickremesinghe government preserved peace for two and half years in the country and now it has been endangered by this government. He said the present government should dedicate itself to peace. But like Attanayaka he did not describe how it has been endangered. He only said there were conflict of opinion in the government about peace that has made peace difficult.
But government sources said the government was doing its best to carry forward a peace process stalled during the previous government headed by Ranil Wickremesinghe .
Tissa Attanayaka in his statement to the Divaina said that the People’s Alliance government should take the fullest responsibility of the lost lives of the policemen in the suicide blast.
But government sources said during the UNP regime scores of lives of police officers and intelligence men of the army were lost at the hands of the LTTE.
Although the suicide blast has all the hallmarks of the LTTE, it has now denied any connection to the blast and condemned the blast in a statement.
Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was the first leader to condemn the act in a public statement.
