NARROW MINDED/ RACIST JHU AND NFF TRY TO BLOCK DEVOLUTION!!! BUT ANGRY PRESIDENT SAID,"NO" !!!

JHU and Weerawansa faction face President’s ire; Both told ‘no going back on promises’
Published by editor Breaking News Jul 2, 2009

By A Special Representative in Colombo Colombo, 02 July (asiantribune.com): Jathika Hela Urumya and the Wimal Weerawansa faction have faced the ire of President Mahinda Rajapaksa over the devolution issue. In fact, the President is understood to have read the riot act, telling them bluntly that they could leave the government if they don’t like his ‘acceptable’ and ‘sustainable’ solution to the ethnic issue.
‘My topmost priorities’, the President told a delegation of JHU and Weerawansa faction who met him on Tuesday morning at his official residence, the Temple Trees, to press their case against the 13th amendment to the Constitution, ‘ are reconciliation and resettlement’ and not hawkishness and chauvinism’.
Asserting he was not working under any pressure, much less of India, he rejected their demand outright to scrap the 13th amendment.
‘It is a part of the country’s statute. Anybody who is opposed the Government stand to fully implement the 13th amendment Plus 1, they are free to leave (the government)’, the President made it clear.
All lawmakers have entered Parliament by taking oath of allegiance to the constitution and by swearing to uphold the statute.
Eye witnesses to the Presidential outburst say that he was particularly harsh on Wimal Weerawansa and a JHU minister.
While Weerawansa reportedly have told the President that police powers were devolved to the Tamils it has to be “over our dead bodies”, the JHU Minister rested his case against devolution of police powers to the provinces on the ground that the move would belittle the majority community. ‘Don’t do that (conferring police powers). Safeguard our self-dignity,’ the minister reportedly pleaded.
The plea invited a rebuke. ‘You are trying to safeguard your self-respect at the cost of the country’s self-respect,’ President Rajapaksa reportedly told, according to reliable sources.
Rajapaksa told his allies that he was guided not by electoral prospects but by his promise to the people.
‘I am not worried of election. I may win or loose an election. It matters little to me whether I can form a government or no. For me my word is important. I gave a promise to the people and the country. I will honor my word’.
He went on to tell them that the people of Sri Lanka had voted him to bring about a decent solution to the Tamil problem and that he had vowed to bring about an ‘acceptable’ and ‘sustainable’ solution.
From the accounts of the Tuesday meeting that are doing rounds of the political circuit, the President gave an earful to both JHU and Wimal Weerawanasa on state craft.
‘There are no minorities in our country. Tamils, Muslims, Malays, Burghers and all the others are not minorities. They are the people of our country. All the people in the country are Sri Lankans. We must realize this and respect this reality. We must act accordingly’.
The stormy interaction with the president in an unusually harsh mood touched upon the India factor. Mahinda Rajapaksa reportedly took them to task telling them that Sri Lanka was able to defeat the LTTE terrorists because of India. ‘Indians are our brothers. We must be grateful for what they have done for us over the years’.
The President took the opportunity to clarify that there is ‘no pressure’ brought on him by the Indian at any given time, but ‘it is the gesture of goodwill and generosity of the great India that has made him to look at India with love and gratitude’.
Turning to the IDP issue, Rajapaksa stated that his first, second and third priorities were the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of the Internally Displaced People, who were victims of the triumphant victory over LTTE, who now languish in the transit camps in Vavuniya. He added they have to be resettled in their own habitat within a period of 180 days.