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Sri Lanka : Military coup plot against Chandrika |
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The investigators into a suicide bomb attack against president Chandrika Kumaratunga at an election rally last month have linked it to a military-business-media conspiracy to overthrow her government and install a military government. Both the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation and the State-run Newspaper, The Daily News, have pinned the conspiracy of attempted assassination of president Kumaratunga on group of military officers, businessmen and Tamil Tiger rebels. The newspaper said that police have unearthed vital information posing to the involvement of a “southern hand” along with other businessmen sympathetic towards the opposition UNP whose’s leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was defeated by Mrs. Kumaratunga in last month presidential election.
While the CID sources in Colombo were quoted as saying that a group of millionaire businessmen were funding the UNP and the LTTE to oust Ms. Kumaratunga the daily news claimed that there were reports that several army personnel were also linked to the alleged plot and there had been plans to capture power through a military coup if the president was killed in the town hall bomb blast.
Ms. Kumaratunga was wounded in an attempt on her life on Dec. 18 when a suicide bomber detonated explosives stabbed to her body at an election rally in Colombo killing 26 people. Ms. Kumaratunga had a miraculous escape because her bullet proof car came in the way of the suicide bomber. She was however hurt in the right eye and the doctors in London have told her that she may permanently lose vision in one of her eyes.
According to the newspaper the police uncovered the coup conspiracy from taped telephone conversations following with the wife of a wealthy Tamil banker and Renuka Shanmughanathan, the sister of a Colombo based Tamil businessman Tirukumar Natesan were arrested and interrogated. It is alleged that the businessman turned against her after some government contracts were denied and after the bomb attack they threw a huge party to celebrate. The Sri Lankan police is investigating if a private bank funded the suicide bombing on President Kumaratunga as part of a wider conspiracy of a military coup. The daily news said a loan of $ 694,000 had been given to the wife of a director of the unnamed bank and investigators are checking if the money went to a terrorist organization. The conspiracy theory has been ridiculed and rejected as ludicrous by the UNP calling it a first step towards police state. The UNP secretary general said the allegations, were the part of the conspiracy by the government to discredit the party.
Political observers in New Delhi say, the government’s claim that some elements from the armed forced had a hand in the conspiracy need to be viewed with far greater alarm. Since there are no Tamil officers in the defence forces, the conspirators would appear to have been driven by totally different motives. It is a widely accepted fact that some in the armed forces, especially at the lower levels, are tired of the endless war. This has been reflected in the large numbers of desertions from the Sri Lankan Army in the last few years. By and large, however, the army has been behaving as a professional force. The government will have to deal with the case without affecting the morale and confidence of the armed forces, which are already under considerable pressure. The fact that the Dec. 18 bombing has been followed by another suicide bomb blast right outside the Prime Minister’s office, the assassination of a well-known Tamil leader in Colombo ad a prison riot in Kalutara - all within three weeks - is indicative of the kind of security challenges Ms. Kumaratunga is facing. She will have to take the people into confidence on the nature of the conspiracy if she wants to deal with it in an effective manner.
Reports from Colombo say that following two suicide bomb attacks, one at an election rally of President Kumaratunga and another near the office of her mother, Prime Minister, Bhandaranaike, the cabinet ministers have been asked to cut down their public engagements, the directive follows reports that eleven women Black Tiger suicide bombers have entered the capital. This followed interrogation of 52 men and 12 women in connection with the two suicide bombings. Police have also arrested an alleged LTTE suicide bomber in eastern Batticoloa district. The 20-year old Mannan, a Tamil youth was allegedly assigned to kill a pro-government EPDP leader, Douglas Devananda.
Killing of Tamil politicians commenced with the rise in militancy and in 1975, Alfred Duraiyappa, then Mayor of Jaffna was shot dead. The island’s violence spans the northern and southern regions, the Tamil and Sinhala polity and the decades since the Seventies. The northern aggressions for separatism and the southern insurgency have been the focal points of political violence. While the separatist LTTE remains the main challenge to the Sri Lankan polity, the southern Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) has emerged as a mainstream political party, aspiring to usher in its revolution through the ballot. Sri Lanka’s political killings have largely been those which have been well-planned and executed, but with no headway the investigations. But for the assassination of Bandaranaike, whose killers were punished, those behind the other murders have managed to evade the arm of justice.
Barring suicide bombings, which have gained the signature of the LTTE after Indian investigators unraveled the assassination of former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, the other killings carried out through the bullet or the bomb have remained unprobed. In north, several murders of those considered traitors of the LTTE’s goal for separation have taken place. Apart from political leaders, these include government servants. Barring the investigations on the killing of Alfred Duraiyappa, where some persons were arrested, no headway was reported in the other cases. In the case of the leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), Mr. A. Amirthalingam, the killers were immediately gunned down ad identified as those belonging to the LTTE. Some of the prominent Tamil leaders whose murders have gone un-investigated include Dharmalingam and Alalasundaram, who were shot dead in the early 1980s. The killings of Siri Sabaratnam, Sam Thambimutu, Thangathurai and Sarojini Yogeswaran are some other murder cases whose murders went unresolved.
The husband of Sri Lankan President, Vijaya Kumaratunga, who was also a popular political leader, and the killing of the Lalith Athulathmudali, who was hot dead, were followed up with commissions of inquiry. Though complicity was pinned on political leaders, the conclusions were not followed up judicially. Conspiracy theories are floated in the murders of Rohana Kumara, an editor of a Sinhala publication and that of a Tamil editor, Ramesh in 1999. Among the acts of urban terrorism, barring the Central Bank bombing in 1996, where the LTTE was named in the courts and its leader Prabhakaran listed as an accused, not much of follow-up has been made.
Chandrika toying with parliamentary elections
President Kumaratunga is reportedly considering holding mid-term parliamentary elections after a key ally of her ruling People’s Alliance (PA) decided to oppose a law to permit the factions from the ranks of the opposition UNP. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress said it would oppose any bill to permit defections. She was toying with the idea of bringing in a bill to permit defections from the UNP to get the requisite two-thirds majority in parliament needed to ram her peace package for the North-east through. Her PA is 16 short of two-thirds majority. Government needs the two-third majority to replace the existing constitution with its draft constitution which provides for greater devolution of powers. The issues of devolution and merger have been points of disagreement, with the government preferring an equal devolution of powers for the regions and the opposition UNP voicing the case of asymmetric devolution. The UNP’s position has been that there should be greater sharing of powers for the Tamil majority regions, thereby advocating the case for need-based devolution. In this setting of disparate political thinking, the opinion poll has concluded that a majority of both Tamils and Sinhalese prefer equal devolution to the provincial councils.
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