President Rajapaksa deserves praise for chiding the Sinhala hecklers
News about President Rajapaksa shouting at Tamils who hooted at him for speaking in Tamil in Jaffna is not true. What really happened?
Mahinda was speaking at UPFA rally in Vavuniya and Wanni district candidate Sumathipala had transported large numbers of Sinhala supporters. When Mahinda spoke in Tamil some of these Sinhalese started hooting and shouted this is a Sinhala country, We are Sinhalese, Speak in Sinhala.
But Mahinda refused and replied-This is Sinhala country and you and I are Sinhalese but there are Tamil people here who want to hear me talk. Mahinda advised the hecklers not to be smart “Pandithayas”&asked them to leave the venue if they did not want to listen to his Tamil speech.
When these elements continued jeering Mahinda said – since you are trying to stop me speaking in Tamil I will continue to talk in Tamil. When the jeering went on Mahinda said in Tamil the more you make noise the more I will speak in Tamil& continued with his speech in Tamil.
Realising what was happening at that time the Tamils in the audience shouted and cheered Mahinda for his stand & drowned out the Sinhala hoots. Some reports about the incident said that Mahinda had shouted in Jaffna at Tamils who were hooting him for mispronouncing some Tamil words.
These “controversial” reports led to news spreading that Mahinda had uttered racist remarks at Tamils jeering him for speaking “faulty” Tamil. This was false & Mahinda deserves praise for chiding the Sinhala hecklers & for trying to speak in some Tamil at least when addressing Tamils.
Reports say that Mahinda reprimanded Wanni UPFA candidate Sumathipala for not preventing his “Sinhala”supporters from heckling the president. The troubling fact is that some Sinhala UPFA supporters in Vavuniya could erupt into jeers&hoots against the President for talking in Tamil.
