Before the 2020 general election campaign began, a Muslim leader met a Rajapakse at the height of Covid and said,
‘Sir, our elderly parents are terrified and bemoan the fact that they will be cremated upon death…’.By
‘Can’t you Muslims come up with a cure for this Covid? They won’t die then…”
Rajapaksa made this reply rather sarcastically. By then, the cremation of Covid Muslim deaths had been chosen as one of the main themes of the 2020 general election campaign.
Besides, Rishad Badurdeen was also a major campaign slogan. A big operation was launched to arrest Rishad by getting closer to the general election. That operation was not second to the operation to capture Prabhakaran.
Muslim opposition was the vote-winning machine in Pohottuwa. It is through Muslim opposition that Gotabaya emerges as the presidential candidate of Pohottuwa.
Aluthgama Muslim riots occurred in June 2014 when the then President Mahinda was trying to go for an emergency presidential election in 2014.
But it did not work for the 2015 presidential election because Mahinda was afraid of losing Muslim votes due to Muslim opposition. Gotabaya was the popular figure of the anti-Muslim wave of Mahinda’s government. Gotabaya was suppressed because Mahinda was afraid of losing Muslim votes and did not create a Muslim opposition. But in the 2015 presidential election, all the Muslim parties abandoned Mahinda because of this anti-Muslim wave created by Gota.
After Mahinda’s defeat in the 2015 presidential election, a campaign was launched targeting Rishad saying he was destroying the Wilpattu forest. This campaign soon emerged as anti-Muslim protest. In 2018, there was a Sinhala-Muslim riot in Kandy.
By now the Muslim parties had abandoned Mahinda, so Mahinda was also ready to swing in the anti-Muslim wave. But that wave was attractive to Gotabaya. The reason is because of the close relationship Gotabhaya had with the founders of this anti-Muslim wave and the media outlets that gave it publicity since the 2014 Aluthgama riots.
In 2019, the Easter bomb exploded. After that, the topic of Shafi’s infertility surgery came up. Shafi was arrested. Muslim houses were burnt. Riots broke out. Gotabhaya, the hero who saved the Sinhala Buddhists, became the presidential candidate.
As soon as Gota became president with the sole Sinhala Buddhist vote, there was a great uproar at the Swiss Embassy. During the Maitri-Ranil government, Nishantha Silva, a police intelligence officer who investigated the allegations against Gotabha, including the murder of journalist Lasanta, escaped to Switzerland with the files containing the allegations against Gotabha, a news that shook Sri Lanka.
Gota’s government alleged that Gania Frances, a woman who worked in the visa section of the Swiss embassy, helped him get a visa to escape. She complained to the police that government security forces kidnapped her, sexually assaulted her, intimidated her and threatened her to show visa files at the embassy.
This is completely false. This is a lie concocted to discredit me and the government…’
Gotabhaya was on the tip of popularity when the 69 lakh people who voted for him demanded the same from Gania Francis.
Wimal and other ministers came on TV and radio saying that she is a Tamil national and a tiger and scared the public.
The government did not investigate her complaint and arrested her. Not only was she arrested, but she was referred to a psychiatric committee at Angoda Mental Hospital to see if she had a mental illness. The photos of her covering her face and reaching the Angoda hospital with the Swiss Embassy officials were a photo that hypnotized the 69 lakh people at that time.
Shafi, who was a victim of the Muslim opposition that was created to make Gota president, was released from prison at the time of the struggle.
Shafi’s daughter was in GCE OL class at that time. She was getting ready to appear for the General Certificate Examination.
Shafi’s wife had to withdraw her from the school because some children in the school teased her about sterile surgery. She said she can’t go to school.
Gania Francis is also a wife. I don’t know what her family felt when she was sent to Angoda Mental Hospital to see if she was suffering from a mental disorder because she defamed the President.
Gotabha, who thought that not even a fly could fly above his head, and sent Gania Francis to Angoda calling she is crazy by delighting Sinhala Buddhist, had to flee the country in July 2022.
Gota fled the country fearing the ‘aragalaya’ and looked for a safe country being in a safe ship like Nishantha Silva who fled in fear of death on the night of Gota’s victory.
Just like Gania who was accused of helping to get visa to Nishantha and sent to Angoda, Gota too called the embassies of foreign countries to get a visa to escape the country. But no country was willing to accept him only a Muslim country Maldives Muslim speaker Nasheed helped him. Gota saved his life by fleeing to the Maldives.
Today he cannot go to America where his son lives. Although he requested the American Embassy in this country, there was no positive response from the American Embassy.
Some media reported that he recently went to Dubai, another Muslim country, to see if he could settle in Dubai.
Gota faced a tragedy. His politics were intertwined with race and religion. There are hundreds of innocent people who were arrested because he is creating divisions between races and religions in order to win the crowns of that politics. Ranil’s government has now started that game.
On the day Mahinda’s son Namal Rajapakse was arrested, former Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranaike’s son said in a twitter message that ‘Karma is a bitch’. This means that Karma chases after people who have sinned like a bitch. He had remembered the hardtime that the Rajapaksas had given to his mother.
Janaka Rathnayake, Chairman of the Utility Commission, who fabricated false allegations against Shirani and gave them to the Rajapaksa’s to oust Shirani Bandaranaike from the post of Chief Justice through an impeachment, has also been punished recently. That day, the Rajapaksa family dismissed Shirani from the post of Chief Justice by making Janaka’s accusations palatable by the majority vote of the Parliament.
The same Rajapaksas themselves used the majority vote in Parliament to oust Janaka Ratnayake from the position of Chairman of the Utilities Commission.
Be it Shafi, Rishad, Jerem, Natasha or Bruno, all those who want to use religion for political game should be told that ‘Karma is a bitch chasing behind’.