By P.K. Balachandran
Colombo: Sri Lankan Minister for National Heritage Anura Bandaranaike has told The Sunday Leader that if the Mahinda Rajapaksa government does not provide adequate security for his sister and former President Chandrika Bandaranike Kumaratunga, the family will get “Indian securi- ty” for her! “She remains a prime target of the LTTE. She was nearly killed. She deserves ample security and nobody should deny her that. If the President is unable to grant the former President sufficient security due to the military engagement or any other reasons, we will get her Indian security,” he told the latest edition of the opposition paper. The government had drastically scaled down her security following a Supreme Court judgement which said that she was enjoying undue privileges as a former President. Bandaranaike said that his sister had been told by the family that she should not come back to Sri Lanka after her daughter’s wedding in London because the secu- rity provided for her was inadequate. “It is unsafe for her to return without sufficient security,” he said. Kumaratunga was attacked by an LTTE suicide bomber in 1999 and she had lost an eye in the blast. “She nearly died and remains on the hit list despite not holding any political office,” Bandaranaike said. “The judiciary has no business to reduce the security of a person who is under grave threat,” he added. Ungrateful to neighbour Bandaranaike ,whose relations with the President Rajapaksa have been very unsteady, said that it was “vain and childish” to imagine (as some in the government seemed to do) that LTTE would one day attack India and that India had to be sensitised to this to make it fully support Sri Lanka’s policy on the Tamil question. “India will never ever be an LTTE target. India can blast the day lights out of the LTTE,” he said. Any attempt to drag in India would fail because it would not be “fooled” again, he warned. balachanster@gmail.com
HT (04 June, 2007)
