JVP leader says plan to arrest him, Tilvin

 by Saman Indrajith
JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe yesterday accused President Mahinda Rajapaksa of planning to put him and the party’s general secretary Tilvin Silva behind bars for the crimes committed during the second JVP uprising in late eighties.

"We have information Mahinda Rajapaksa plans to arrest me and Comrade Tilvin and to take us before courts for what we did in past. This they would never be able to prove. Even if we are put behind bars, we know how to deal with such situation. There are no prison walls high or strong enough to confine us. Our slain leader Rohana Wijeweera had taught us the way to carry out the mission staying inside prisons," Amarasinghe told the party’s fifth national convention held at the Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium in Colombo.

"I know he (the president) wants the JVP’s old man to leave the country.

I declare today at this historic convention, I will never leave my motherland again. I fear not these threats. We are well tempered enough to face and counter suppressions."

"We know that he, whom we brought to power, has been vested with powers of an executive president and he is the commander in chief. We warn the commander that he can use his power and rifles the way he likes but not to commit the mistake of sitting on a rifle. Putting us in jails would be something similar to a commander sitting on a bayonet," he said.

General Secretary Tilvin Silva said President Mahinda Rajapaksa is becoming another ‘Ferdinand Marcos.’ "Now it is clear that Mahinda Rajapaksa is trying to do a Marcos. He has handed over all vital economically important institutions and corporations to his relatives. Rs 3200 millions were wasted for his experiment with Mihin Air and the end result is another world record of having an airline without flights. Journalists are being abducted and assaulted and political opposition is suppressed with the use of force," he said.

Silva said that soon Mahinda Rajapaksa would enact the complete role of president-dictator silencing those who oppose him. "Marcos ruined the economy of the Philippines and killed thousands of political enemies. He suppressed all who took to the streets against him. But, at the end it was the Philippine people who ousted him. There is a lesson for those who attempt to imitate Marcos. It is people who decide the leaders."