Tuesday, 17 September 2013 00:59
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TNA challenges President over manifesto
As a lawyer, President should know what federalism means: Wigneswaran
Government provoking the Sinhalese people: Sampanthan
Willing to work with President Rajapaksa: TNA
Following days of attacks from the ruling party about its election manifesto, the Tamil National Alliance yesterday hit back hard against the Government for provoking the Sinhalese people and vehemently denied it was pursuing a separatist agenda.
The TNA challenged President Mahinda Rajapaksa to reveal which parts of the TNA manifesto spoke of dividing the country.
“The TNA is talking about the control of Tamil peoples affairs within one country. LTTE was fighting for a separate country. The separatist agenda came with the LTTE and with their defeat that is over. We are not seeking a separate state,” the Party’s Chief Ministerial Candidate for the North and former Supreme Court Justice C.V. Wigneswaran told reporters yesterday.
The former Judge said that what the Government was doing to portray parties within the democratic mainstream as being the same as armed terrorists was very wrong. “This is so they can treat us also like the terrorists,” Wigneswaran said.
The Chief Ministerial hopeful of the North said it was time the President came up with a solution to the Tamil problem if he was unhappy about devolution.
“The President needs to tell us is he willing to share power or not? If the answer is no then we need to tell that to the world and move forward,” Wigneswaran explained.
It was absurd that as a student of the law, the President was unaware of what federalism really meant.
“How can he not know that federalism is a system for people in different parts of the country to control their own affairs? It is not a system to divide a country,” he charged.
Also addressing reporters yesterday, TNA Leader R. Sampanthan charged that instead of offering a solution to the Tamil problem, President Mahinda Rajapaksa was making statements to provoke the Sinhalese people in order to consolidate his own power.
“What the President is doing is very wrong, we have never asked for the country to be divided,” the TNA Leader said. Within one country, the TNA has put forward what it believes should frame a solution to the Tamil problem, Sampanthan told reporters.
The TNA Leader said that his party was willing to work with President Rajapaksa.
“He became the President through the people’s mandate. If the TNA receives a mandate from the people of the North, then he has to work with us too. He cannot scare us, he knows this,” the TNA Chief said, referring to the President.
The TNA said it had presented its view of how the final political arrangement for the Tamils should be framed and it was up to the Government to answer.
“So far, there has been no answer. Not to date,” the TNA Leader said.
