Indian FM exerts pressure on TNA, wants Sampanthan in Rajapaksa's PSC

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 January 2012, 18:11 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance has been pressurised by the visiting Indian Foreign Minister S. Krishna to take part in the SL Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC), sources close to TNA told TamilNet Wednesday. At the same time, demanding the TNA to come through the PSC farse, the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's delegation that has been engaging with the TNA in fruitless talks, boycotted scheduled talks this time for the second day. Reacting to the behaviour of the Sri Lankan government, which has failed to meet the TNA as scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday, Mr. M.K. Sivajilingam, the political leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), which is a constituent party of the TNA, said Wednesday that the Tamil alliance should at least now realise that there is no point in talking about the 13 amendment, or something plus or minus to it.

The statement by M.K. Sivajilingam

Mr. Sivajilingam, in his hand-written statement said that the TNA should categorically state that it was seeking a federal solution based on the principle of the “Internal right to Self-Determination”. The TNA should not give space to Colombo to continue its drama till the completion of the structural genocide in the occupied Tamil homeland, Sivajilingam said.

Mr. Sivajilingam was alluding that the TNA should turn to the wider international community.

However, the statement by the TNA politician Sivajilingam also exposed the level of confusion that prevails among the Tamil parliamentarians on the notion of “internal right to self-determination”, Tamil civil society circles in Jaffna said.

The polity of the Eezham Tamil Nation, which is entitled to the right to national self-determination, cannot fall back to an already exhausted and failed pre-1976 model of the “internal right to self-determination,” which was invalidated by the late SJV Chelvanayakam at the Sri Lankan parliament before he came with Vaddukkoaddai Resolution in 1976, an academic representative of the civil society told TamilNet commenting on Mr. Sivajilingam's stand on the internal right to self-determination.

“This so-called internal right to self-determination doesn't even scale up to the political principles put forward by the TELO at Thimphu,” the civil society representative further said.

“The Tamil politicians of the day should master the art of diplomacy in order to manoeuvre themselves through the complex world of diplomacy dominated by agenda-setters. They should be aware what is not compatible with the historical, earned and remedial claims of Tamil sovereignty,” he further said.

In the meantime, a recently nominated Colombo-centric parliamentarian of the TNA has also been exerting pressure on Mr. Sampanthan to fall in line with the thinking of the Indian establishment, sources close to Suresh Premachandran MP said.

Mr. Premachandran, when contacted by journalists declined to comment on the stand taken by the TNA on Parliamentary Select Committee and said that the TNA leadership was still discussing the stalemate created by the stand of the Sri Lankan government not to engage with the TNA pressurizing it to take part in the PSC.

Recently, the SL presidential sibling Basil Rajapaksa came with a veiled threat to Mr. Sampanthan questioning whether there was a need for a “Speed Highway” to Trincomalee. The killer squads operated by the UPFA had deployed speeding vehicles to get rid of their opponents in the past.