The Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province has formed a new “non-political” organization which observers see as the first step towards splitting the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which he represents in the Northern Provincial Council (NPC).
The outfit, christened Tamil Makkal Peravai or Tamil Peoples’ Assembly (TPA), was formed after a four-hour meeting at the Jaffna Public Library.
Estimates of the number of people who attended vary from 15 to 30. But the significant thing is that only one TNA member of the NPC, and not a single TNA MP attended.
It was a closed door meeting into which the media were not allowed. After the meeting, Wigneswaran refused to brief the media, but individual attendees spoke to the press.
Prominent among those who attended were Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, leader of the pro-LTTE Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF), and Suresh Premachandran of the Eelam Peoples’ Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), who is opposed to the TNA’s leaders. To give it a non-political color, the religious leader Srila Sri, Somasundara Desigar Paramacharya of the Nallai Adeenam was included along with some civil society activists. (NIE)
-Agencies
