The Mulberry Group, consisting of PA's vociferous backbenchers which has been in disarry for the past few months, is to be reactivated soon, a spokesman said.
The group has plans to get involved in development projects of the government and act as a mediator in conflict resolution in addition to highlighting corruption and other malpractices, he said.
"As a pressure group, we will question and challenge various projects without hindering the work, he said. We do it for the sake of the government, and not to provide the UNP with petty points.
The spokesman said the assassination of Ratnapura District Parliamentarian Nalanda Ellawala and the promotion of a few members to Deputy Ministerial posts had slackened the pace at which the Mulberry Group was functioning, but it would again take up an active role in bridging the distance between the government and the people.
The Mulberry Group played a key role last year in resolving the three-day blackout crisis and has also highligted alleged acts of corruption.
A mass public prayer for a just and peaceful solution to the ethnic conflict will be held on Saturday January 3 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the National Basilica in Tewatte, Ragama.
The prayer has been organised by the Kithudana Pubuduwa and all are invited.
An ex-principal of Princess of Wales' College, Moratuwa, Ms. Yasa Balapatabendi, died in a road accident at Dehiwala. She was 66.
Her remains lie at the official quarters of the Chief Post Master, at Panadura, and will be removed to the Minuwanpitiya Cemetery this evening for burial. Ms. Balapatabendi will be remembered for her efforts in making Princess of Wales, a national school.
A delay in arrival of a flour ship at the Trincomalee harbour has left some bakers with poor quality flour and others with a shortage of it.
While bakers in Colombo complain that they are facing difficulties in using the imported flour from Dubai and Singapore outstation bakers complain that they are not getting flour at all.
"It is difficult to make bread with this Dubai flour, as a result either we mix it with another brand of flour or we are left with little or no choice," was what all the bakers that The Sunday Times spoke to had to say.
Eye witnesses of the December 19 Kalutara prison riots are refusing to give statements to the police and say they will testify only before a Commission of Inquiry, a magistrate was told.
Kalutara Magistrate J. R. Dharmasekera who took up the case where three ditainees were killed in the prison riots directed police to continue investigations in consultation with the Attorney General.
Pensioners, take note of these days on which your payments will be paid next year, as announced by the Pensions Department.
January 8th, February 12th, March 10th, April 06th, May 07th, June 11th, July 14th, August 11th, September 10th, October 13th, November 12th and December 10th.
By general reckoning the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is most likely to be in the driver’s seat in New Delhi after the Indian parliamentary elections slated for February-March 1998. The BJP could either form a government on its own, or head a widely desparate coalition. The hope in Sri Lanka as well as India, is that a BJP government would be a stable and strong one, unlike the two which preceded it.
The Tamils of Sri Lanka and Lankan Tamil expatriates across the globe, who want an activist pro-Tamil Indian policy on Sri Lanka, are pinning their hopes on the BJP. It is not difficult to see why this should be so. Firstly, the Tamils have seen the Congress (I) and the United Front for what they are. Both seem to have washed their hands off the Lankan Tamil problem. The BJP is a new pudding, whose proof is in the eating.
Charismatic Jayalalitha
“The UF government might have wanted to help the Tamils even after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, but their utter dependence on Congress support for surivival, militated against any pro-Tamil policy. After Rajiv’s assassination, the Congress (I) wanted India to have no truck with the Sri Lankan Tamils. The BJP, on the other hand, starts on a clean slate. It neither has any commitments to the Gandhi family, nor would it need the Congress (I) for its survival in the government. It would thus be in a position to follow an independent and fresh policy on the Tamil issue,” said an ex-Tamil militant leader.
Lankan Tamils think highly of the fair-mindedness and abilities of the BJP leader and Prime Minister to be, Atal Behari Vajpayee. They expect him to give them a sympathetic hearing, something which Inder Kumar Gujral did not. The Gujral doctrine, which endeared Mr. Gujral to the majority Sinhalese, was anathema to the Tamils.
The alliances struck by the BJP in the run up to the elections, give the Lankan Tamils reasons to be hopeful of having a friendlier government in Delhi soon. The BJP’s coalition partners in Tami Nadu include two avowedly pro-LTTE outfits — the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) led by S. Ramadas, and the Marumalarchi DMK (MDMK) led by V. Gopalswamy. These are backed by a mass based party like the AIADMK, led by the charismatic Jayalalitha. Ms. Jayalalitha had been anti-LTTE while in power between 1991-96, but being an opportunist, she could go back to the MGR era and become a Lankan Tamils’ champion if political expediency required it, the Tamils here believe.
In populous Bihar, in north India, the BJP has the Samata Party as its ally. Samata chief, George Fernandes, had organised an international conference on Eelam Tamils in New Delhi on Dec.14, defying a government ban. In the west, the BJP has Shiv Sena as its ally. Sena chief, Bal Thackerey had hailed Prabhakaran as a Hindu warrior. Some Tamil leaders like to portray Prabhakaran as an “extremist Hindu” and see similarities with the BJPers. According to one Tamil source, the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS), a BJP ally, and the militant arm of the “Hindutwa” movement in India, had clandestinely funded the LTTE in 1990-91. A Jaffna based journalist told this writer that the LTTE’s anti-Muslim depredations in the last seven years, could endear it to the BJP.
The BJP itself is seen as revising its stand on the Tamil and the LTTE questions, in view of its interest in securing a foothold in Tamil Nadu, where, currently, it has no presence (see accompanying interiview with L. Ganesan, General Secretary, Tamil Nadu unit of BJP). Tamils believe that the alliances formed by the BJP, though patently opportunistic now, would in course of time, lead to the BJP’s taking a pro-Tamil or even a pro-LTTE line.
Indeed, as one seasoned LTTE watcher put it, a BJP linked group had met Prabhakaran in the early days and asked him to drop the Tamil orientation of his struggle in favour of a pan Hindu line. Prabhakaran had rejected it outright. There were too many Christian supporters for him to take an exclusively Hindu line. But Tamil sources say that the BJP would not insist on a Hindu line now, as the BJP itself has shed its extremist Hindu or exclusivist Hindu skin. It has struck alliances with non-Hindu parties like the Akali Dal in Punjab, and anti-Hindu parties like the PMK and MDMK in Tamil Nadu. It has broken caste barriers by aligning itself with the Harijan BSP in Uttar pPradesh.
Likewise, the non-Hindu, rationalist or secular parties have stopped looking at the BJP as the political untouchable. Tamil Nadu, which once aassociated the BJP with “North Indian, Brahmin-Bania, Hindi Imperialism,” is today seeing very ethnicity conscious parties vying with each other to strike deals with the BJP. Old prejudices and taboos are vanishing, and a new ball game is in place, with results few can foresee.
Continue to the News/Comment page 5 * Sri Lankan Tamil problem is India's * Hindu party aims at power, but way to go * Nuclear arms should have had their day
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