UNP hoist by own petard?

The LTTE political wing leader S.P Thamilselvan has dropped a veritable bombshell that is bound to upset the main plank of the UNP’s campaign against the Government.

Since the defeat of UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe at the last Presidential election, the party is waging a relentless campaign to pin this defeat onto an alleged ‘Rajapaksa-LTTE deal’ where it is alleged money was given to the outfit to force a polls boycott by the Tamils thus denying victory to their candidate.

This was also claimed as the chief reason for the defection of Mangala Samaraweera and Siripathi Sooriyaarachchi to the opposition holding high moral ground. The ‘Tiger deal” was used as a bludgeon to attack President Mahinda Rajapaksa at every turn with the subject being the chief slogan of the UNP leader at every political rally.

Now we hear from no less a personage than the LTTE’s political Commissar that neither was there any pact with the agents of then Prime Minister and Presidential aspirant Mahinda Rajapaksa nor was there any receipt of money by their outfit.

The statement made by Thamilselvan to the Udayan Newspapers, coming from a member of the LTTE’s top hierarchy no doubt has the official imprimatur of the Tigers.

This statement no doubt is going to be a hot potato thrown into the Southern polity that is being bombarded day in day out about this secret pact with a ruthless terrorist organisation.

Be that as it may there will be those among us who will question the credibility of a statement made by a terrorist leader. On the other hand there will also be those who would be foxed by the logic of the LTTE.

They would quite correctly wonder why the LTTE which is suffering its worst ever battle, reversals under the present Government would want to bail out a man who is been bombarded by this accusation that is likely to do great damage to his political future.

It just does not quite fit in with the behaviour of an organisation who would like to see the ouster of President Rajapaksa who has proved to be their nemesis, at the earliest. There would no doubt be LTTE watchers who will attempt to give their own interpretations to this statement.

This unequivocal statement by Thamilselvan however is going to take the wind off the sail in the campaign of the main opposition UNP which has hitched its electoral fortunes on this single allegation.

Whatever be, the LTTE’s motives of giving a clean bill of health to their most hated object there is no doubt that the statement would remove any ambiguity in the minds of the ordinary masses vis-a-vis the Opposition charges. For them it would be a case of having it from the horse’s mouth.

It would be interesting to see the impact this statement would have on the proposed Parliamentary Select Committee to probe the alleged deal. If the matter is to be probed in depth all shades of evidence and material available would have to be considered.

Is the Select Committee going to summon Thamilselvan? If not how will it reconcile with the Thamilselvan statement since there can be no ambiguity in a probe of this nature.

By this however, the UNP is likely to be hoist by its own petard since there had been so far no denial from the LTTE to the allegations of money and cement provided by the late President Premadasa to the outfit during the time of the IPKF, when the Select Committee which has now been mandated to inquire into all deals by past Governments with the LTTE, takes up the matter. A question of the hunter being the hunted?