Honarable Peace

During the past few year, after Mr. Ranil Wikckramasinghe signed the ceasefire agreement with the LTTE, the JVP, JHU and the right wing SLFP extremists were constantly saying that the country needs an “honorable” peace and not what ever that was there during that time. If the country needed an honorable peace that implies that there was no honorable peace. Either there should have been war or a dishonorable peace. If you compare the past four years (just prior to Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse becoming president), there were only 17 or so deaths in the Sri Lankan military due to LTTE attacks. All of them were either informants or intelligence officers. In the two years before that (1999-2001), there had been thousands of deaths. (Remember, the army lost Elephant Pass army camp during that time.) So if that was war (1999-2001) then I would definitely say that we did not have war during the last four years. So what did we have during the past four years? If it was not war, then it has to be peace. But according to the JVP, JHU, SLFP it was not honorable peace. So it has to be dishonorable peace. Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse said that he would fix this problem. So now I guess we have honorable peace since now he is the President. So just what is the difference between honorable peace and dishonorable peace? During the dishonorable peace, there were no major confrontations, there were no artillery attacks, there were no suicide bombings but 17 military personnel were killed. After we achieved honorable peace, still there were no major confrontations, there were no artillery attacks, there were no suicide bombings but the number of military personnel killed is nearly I think 18 in one month (with two bombings). So it would be 18 times 12 times 4 in the next four years. That would be 864 if I got my maths correct. So we voted Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse to get 864 military personnel killed in the next four years by changing the dishonorable peace to honorable peace. That would be a change from less than 5 deaths per year to 216 deaths per year. Right?

But wait... What is the problem that we are trying to tackle? Is it the population problem?