The Sunday Leader 17th August 1997
I have been prompted by the series , Muslim perspective by Omar Khayyam , to look back at my time in
the SLMC politics in the light of the current minority political gimmicks in Sri Lanka.
In the 1989 general election, half the names of the candidates of the SLMC for the Batticaloa district never showed their faces to their fellow candidates or to their constituency.
In the later years after the 1989 general election a forgery complaint was lodged against a SLMC MP by his own secretary for allegedly embezzling his salary. This was hushed up without any progress being made despite the fact that the thalaivar seemed to have rolled up his sleeves at the outset to teach the MP a lesson.
I recollect how the SLMC was conscripting innocent Muslim youths into the TNA (Tamil National Army) in the run up to the IPKF’s pull out under the then chairman Segu Issadeen’s poetic slogan “ One Village one battalion” ; , and eventually came to terms with their blunders with the collapse of the ill fated TNA.
The leader of the SLMC expressed in an interview aired by Sunrise Radio, London, recently, that peace could be sought by thrusting the government’s peace package on the people without the LTTE, in case the LTTE turned out to be against it. However his MP for Batticaloa is striking a deal with the LTTE and is suddenly insisting on the indispensability of talks with the LTTE
In the past years it has been evident that the SLMC has lost its argument on many aspects of its political commitment , despite being successful at elections like the TULF.
S.M.M.Bazeer
UK
Letters to the editor
From “THE SUNDAY LEADER” , August 17 , 1997
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