For fear that his own vote bank would be wiped out if P. Ariyal Ashraff were allowed to hand over houses built for tsunami-affected people from his own hometown who had lost their homes,
the very same individuals who, for the past 20 years, prevented those houses from ever reaching the people;
who blocked the houses from being given to poor families who staged hunger protests and laid siege to the DS office demanding, “Give us the tsunami houses”;
who used loudspeakers at the Badur Mosque and the Nooraniya Mosque to warn people not to attend the foundation-stone-laying ceremony;
who attempted to assault Ariyal Ashraff when he came to the Badur Mosque for discussions on the housing scheme;
who openly threatened him in the corridors of Parliament, saying, “You may try to build houses in Nuraicholai—go ahead if you dare”;
who stopped buses carrying people attending the foundation-stone ceremony by setting tyres on fire in the middle of the road at the Fifth Mile Post in Akkaraipattu;
who, using their loyalist named Kumar in Ampara, set fire to the Saudi Arabian flag;
are the very same people now trying to obstruct our government’s efforts—after 20 long years—to finally hand over the dilapidated and abandoned houses to those who are rightfully entitled to them.
Until now, a certain individual had never attended the Akkaraipattu DCC. Yet, out of the 27 Akkaraipattu DCC meetings he has attended, he came specifically to discuss the tsunami housing project.
Until now, he had never attended the Ampara DCC either. But today, he turned up—only to be humiliated by Deputy Minister Vasantha—once again, solely to talk about the tsunami housing scheme.
The malice embedded in their hearts has still not subsided.
A blatant and carefully orchestrated lie is now being spread—that “the leader stopped houses from being allocated according to the national ethnic ratio.”
A response to this will come soon.
What is the meaning of this sudden outpouring of compassion today, which never once surfaced over the past 20 years for Muslim families left homeless by the tsunami?
Is it love for the people?
Or is it merely the bait they intend to stuff into people’s mouths at the next election?