Colombo snatches away even little power devolved to EPC: TNA councilor

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 October 2012, 21:40 GMT]
The leader of the opposition in the Eastern Provincial Council, Mr C. Thandayuthapani, a Tamil National Alliance (TNA) politician, has said that the Sri Lankan government in Colombo was trying to snatch even the littler powers already devolved to the provincial administration in the Eastern Province. The comment by the TNA politician has come in the wake of EPC endorsing the controversial ‘Divineguma’ bill on Tuesday. The draft bill is a blueprint for the structural genocide of the country of Eezham Tamils, say Tamil civil officials in the East. In the meantime, the TNA has also filed a case at the SL Court of appeal against a move by Colombo to get a similar approaval from the colonial military governor in North to approve the bill in the absence of an elected provincial council in the North.

The draft bill has paved way for the establishment of a Department of Divineguma Development incorporating the existing Samurdhi Authority, Southern Development Authority and the Udarata Development Authority into a single unit under Colombo governments Development Ministry, which is headed by SL presidential sibling Basil Rajapaksa.

The Divineguma bill was recently challenged in the SL Supreme Court by two political parties. The SL court ruled the draft bill be referred to the provincial councils before it was passed in the SL Parliament.

On Tuesday, the controversial bill was passed in the Eastern Provincial Council by Mahinda Rajapska's UPFA, with the support of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). 21 voted approving the bill while 15 opposed.

14 members of the ruling UPFA and 7 members of the SLMC voted for the bill and 11 members of the Tamil National Alliance (TNBA) and four members of the United National Party (UNP) voted against it.

The chairperson of the council, Mrs Aroiyawathi Galapathi, a member of the ruling UPFA, did not vote.

Mr Abdul Majeed Mohamed Najeeb, the chief minister of the EPC, who said the bill was paving way for a ‘fast development’ of the Eastern province irrespective of ‘cast, creed and race’, presented the bill for debate on Tuesday morning and the bill was put for vote after a full day debate on Tuesday evening.

Abdul Majeed Mohamed Najeeb has finally paved way for the transfer of even the limited powers in deciding the development affairs to the Colombo centric SL State system, Tamil members in the opposition told media.

The development authority coming with a Sinhala name, Divi-næguma (raising the island) shows what 'development' actually means to Tamils and Tamil-speaking Muslims in the island, commented civil society circles in the East.

This is also an example for the LLRC-based language-implementation of the genocidal state, to inaugurate which the former Indian President Abdul Kalam visited the island earlier this year, the civil circles further said.

[Divi: Theevu in Tamil, island; Nægeema in Sinhala: ascending, ascension; Nægu as prefix in words in Sinhala means to raise; Nookku in Tamil: push, raise, lift, impel, incite. A word of Dravidian Etymology. Dravidian Etymological Dictionary 3722. Other related words in Tamil are Nempu, DED 3743; Nimir, DED 2922.]