Gotabaya dissolves SL Parliament, fixes elections to coincide with Easter attack anniversary

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 March 2020, 23:46 GMT]
SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has dissolved the SL Parliament using the executive powers vested with him to do so, six months earlier than its expiry, on midnight Monday. Fixing 25 April as the date for the new elections, Mr Gotabaya has issued an extra-ordinary Gazette notification specifying 12 - 19 March as the nomination period for 22 electoral districts in the island. Rajapaksa siblings aim at consolidating their power through securing a two-thirds majority in the 225 seat House to strengthen their autocracy as well as the collective autocracy, which is the unitary state of the Sinhala South against the occupied country of Eezham Tamils in the North-East.

Tamil-speaking Muslims, who were at the receiving end after the genocidal onslaught on Eezham Tamils in Vanni in 2009, became particularly vulnerable after the Easter Sunday attacks in April 2019.

The general election has been set to coincide with the first anniversary of the Easter Attacks.

The Rajapaksa siblings are supported by the Sinhala Theravada Buddhist establishment as well as the Sinhala Catholic Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith.

The West and India enacted the so-called transitional justice paradigm without resolving the root cause of the Tamil genocide and the national question post-2009. The “transitional justice” was spent on regime-change and bandwagoning politics of the US-led alliance, which has been locked in the great power competition with China in the Indo-Pacific, particularly since 2013.

The Tamil National Alliance, supposed to represent and advance the Tamil cause, also succumbed to the bandwagoning and failed to bring about a meaningful reconfiguration of the state system in the island. The TNA was even dodging to pursue the path of international justice.

The Eezham Tamils, subjected to seven-decades of protracted genocide in the island, constitute a nation with its traditional homeland in the North-East of the island. The occupied country of Eezham Tamils was denied of reversion to its pre-colonial historical sovereignty, and the people are denied of their right of self-determination by the occupying unitary state in Colombo, formed without the democratic mandate of Eezham Tamils.

If the Rajapaksa establishment secures enough majority, the genocidal character of the unitary state will become much worse than what was witnessed in 1972.