Tamil Diaspora shows thumbs down to the President

President Mahinda Rajapakse’s effort to rope in significant section of the affluent Tamils have miserably failed and the Sri Lankan foreign missions had to go out of the way to scramble a group of Sri Lankans to attend the highly publicised development meeting in Colombo.

The government became desperate lately and requested all its immediate loyal contacts to assemble some Tamils for the meeting. It was Minister Douglas Devananda who had come to the rescue and pooled together his party activists and a few Tamils honeymooning with him post LTTE defeat to sustain their investments in Sri Lanka.


The Foreign Missions mailed invitations to large number of Tamils and hardly few had replied to the personal appeal of the President. Some had responded by asking the President to put the ‘horse before the cart’ by finding ways to deal with the long term political crisis facing the minorities in the country.

The government supporting newspapers reported that ‘over 360 expatriate Sri Lankans from 45 or more countries are expected to participate in the crucial two day forum’. The number is said to include large number of expatriate Sinhalese and Muslims who have been included to inflate the attendance to give a ‘success message’ to the world. Whether the government is paying for their visit is not known.

‘Bridging the gap between Tamil community and the other ethnic groups is one of the key objectives of this endeavour’ said a government supporting newspaper. But the government’s objective has miserably failed as even many of those Tamils who were engaging with the government post defeat of the LTTE are not attending the conference.

One source said few pro LTTE activists from Europe are attending the function with the sole objective of establishing good rapport with the government to protect their investments in Sri Lanka. The multi-billionaire Raj Rajaratnam from the US will be the well noted absentee in the conference.

According to news reports ‘Director General of Public Communication, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ranjith Uyangoda said yesterday that the President and several ministers including Rohitha Bogollagama, Anura Priyadharshana Yapa,Prof G.L. Pieris, were scheduled to address the delegates’.