Of National Security and Corruption

(Naïve) Foreigners coming into our little Banana Republic notice the armed military presence on the roads, and come to two conclusions.

• Sri Lanka is at war (truth)
• Sri Lanka has an awesome military strength (far from the truth)

These two conclusions are also shared by the general public , and is fueling the pointless fighting in the North and East to “eradicate” the LTTE before the Sinhala and Tamil new year (or so MR says).

During one of his recent speeches, MR stated “We have contained the LTTE’s presence unto two districts.” I know one is Colombo, but what’s the other? And despite people like the Gen. Ashok Kumar Mehta saying that GoSL cannot eliminate the LTTE, MR and his little bandwagon keeps on trying to convince that the rising cost of living is indeed justified, as they’ve got a little plan hatched up to completely wipe out the LTTE.

I pity that Hulugalle chap who is desperately trying to convince the nation that the LTTE is “losing”, the forces are “winning” and that life goes on as usual.

We need tp understand that the Sri Lankan military is highly disorganized, it’s corrupt and it’s highly politicized. One doesn’t need a PhD in Defence sciences to understand that that’s a bad combination. We have Parakrama Pannipitiya being accused of corruption by Sarath Fonseka , Pannipitiya suing Fonseka in return for violating his Fundamental Rights. We have a former Navy commander who is accused of corrupt arms deals. We have a MiG deal gone haywire. And to top it off, we have Gotabhaya himself petting former military dissents who are ironically his pals on his lap (and his pet Government institutions).

So, you’re wrong, wrong wrong. We do not have an awesome military might. The Swiss with their punctual, chocolate-eating, toenail-clipper equipped army has a better chance of “eliminating” the LTTE. And they’ll do a very clean and neat job of it.