ITAK announces NPC ministers, EPRLF challenges

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 October 2013, 12:43 GMT]
A press note coming from the ITAK, the main party in the TNA, on Thursday, has announced the list of chairperson and deputy chairperson of the council and the provincial ministers to function under Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran. But EPRLF, the party next in line in terms of number of seats in the council, challenged the list, saying that it was highhandedly decided by a few in the ITAK. In a hastily convened press conference in Jaffna on Thursday, Mr. Suresh Premachandran of the EPRLF, denouncing the list, blamed Mr R. Sampanthan for creating internal dissension within TNA. He also condemned the act of C.V. Wigneswaran taking his oath before Mahinda Rajapaksa.

https://soundcloud.com/tamilnet/suresh-premachandran-10-10

• Press statement by ITAK

There are no provisions in the SL constitution, forcing the Chief Minister of any province to take oath in front of the SL president. We boycotted taking part at the event as we found it morally wrong to do that after campaigning against the war-crime accused Rajapaksas, Suresh Premachandran said.

The ITAK list has announced the names of Mr. P. Ainkaranesan of the EPRLF from Jaffna district for the portfolio of agriculture, animal husbandry, irrigation and environment; Mr. T. Kurukularajah of the ITAK from Ki'linochchi district for education and culture; Dr. P. Sathiyalingam of the ITAK from the Vavuniyaa district for health and Mr Deneesvaran of TELO from the Mannaar district for fisheries, transport and village development.

Mr. C.V.K. Sivagnanam of the ITAK and Mr. Anton Jeyanathan of the ITAK were announced as chair and deputy chair of the council.

Mr. C.V. Wigneswaran, the Chief Minister is taken as party-less 'general candidate' from the Jaffna district

Condemning the way the list was made, an irate Suresh Premachandran said at the press meet, “This is a unilateral decision by the ITAK and we, as constituting parties of the TNA, were not informed or consulted on the appointment of ministerial positions.”

He particularly blamed Mr Sampanthan for creating internal divisions among the constituting parties of the TNA.

The final list seems to have been decided singlehandedly by the ITAK, at a meeting held on Wednesday evening by R Sampanthan, CV Wigneswaran, Mavai Senathiraja, MA Sumanthiran and E Saravanapavan.

“We were not invited to the meet. I have talked to both Sivajilingam and Sitharthan and their parties too were neither invited nor consulted on this crucial matter,” Suresh Premachandran told the journalists in Jaffna. The press statement issued by the ITAK states that a portfolio had been assigned to one EPRLF member in Jaffna. Even this has not been consulted with the EPRLF party, Mr Premachandran told journalists.

“I was not informed or consulted on the appointment of one EPRLF member as minister. It is not a EPRLF decision. Next to ITAK, we are the party having large number of seats,” he said.

6 EPRLF members have been elected in the provincil council, two in Jaffna, two in Mullaiththeevu and two in Vavuniyaa, while the ITAK has secured 14.

The ITAK list has no minister coming from the Mullaiththeevu district.

Tamil national political activists in the island were sad at the way the TNA was bickering on the shallow and hollow NPC, while there are important fundamental issues to address at the detractors of Eezham Tamil cause inside and especially outside of the island.

Ms. Ananthi Sasitharan, who had secured the largest number of votes next to the CM candidate, has announced that she would not aspire for any position of power in the NPC.

Justice Wigneswaran delivers ITAK’s Chelva Memorial Lecture

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 April 2013, 07:01 GMT]
Marking the 36th death anniversary of S.J.V. Chelvanayagam Q.C., Justice C.V. Wigneswaran delivered this year’s Thanthai Chelvanayagam Memorial Lecture, titled “Wither Sri Lankan Tamils,” at the New Kathiresan Hall in Colombo on Friday. The Lecture was organised by the Colombo District Branch of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), formerly known in English as Federal Party and is currently the leading constituent party of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). Justice Wigneswaran’s lecture gains significance, as there are speculations about TNA fielding him as Chief Minister in the Geneva Resolution-urged Northern Provincial Council elections. Despite logic and eloquence in aptly bringing out the cause of Tamils, the lecture was ultimately reeking of the agenda of India and the USA, political observers in the island commented.

Former SC Judge CV Wigneswaran [Photo courtesy: Daily Mirror]

Justice Wigneswaran compared the non-implementation of the 13th Amendment by Colombo to the abrogation of the Banda-Chelva pact and the Dudley-Chelva pact.

He brought out the history of cheat committed on Tamils, once the Sinhala leaders achieved their purposes in the past with the help of Tamils. He traced it back to the times of Sir P. Arunachalam. “Muslims are the latest group of minorities taught that lesson,” he said.

According to him, the SL government is reluctant to hold the provincial elections for the North, even four years after the war, because of the fear that a democratically elected PC would affect the powers of the “Central Government.” He used the federal terminology, Central Government, even though the PC model created under a unitary constitution doesn’t justify it.

There was also a luring hint in his lecture that a democratically elected Northern PC could call for the withdrawal of the Governor coming from the SL military service, and the PC could also call for garrisoning the SL military in barracks.

The Eastern Provincial Council elections took place in May 2008. The USA and India blessed it.

Every one knows the extent of ‘democratic’ manipulations, militarisation, colonisation and the accelerated structural genocide that have taken place in the East under the ‘democratically’ elected Eastern Provincial Council in the last five years.

But no one asks the USA and India about their logic behind sticking to the same model for the North too, and their logic in internationally binding the solutions to Tamils to the PC election, even in forums like the UNHRC, commented Tamil alternative political activists in the island.

Wigneswaran was briefing the history of cheat faced by Tamils, every time after the Sinhala polity fulfilled its agenda. But are we not going to learn from it in facing today’s context of possible cheat coming from the USA and India, once their agenda is fulfilled after making Tamils agree to their ‘reconciliation’ deception, the political activists in the island asked.

While there is a powerful demand from several quarters for the IC to bring in an internationally organised interim administration for Eezham Tamils in the island, in order to stop the on-going structural genocide, TNA parliamentarian Mr. Suresh Premachandran was demanding ‘international monitoring’ of the Northern PC elections.

Justice Wigneswaran implying positively on the Northern PC has to be read along with Suresh Premachandran’s call for international monitoring, political observers said.

* * *

Justice Wigneswaran was logical and eloquent on the cause of Tamils in the island. Tamils in the island were never a minority, but were made a minority, he said.

“It was when the evil genius of a foreign conqueror subdued the whole island with its separate and sovereign people, pulled down age-old national frontiers and for no other reason than his own ‘supervisory convenience’ made the island a single political and administrative unit that the Tamils became a minority […],” he cited M. Vythilingam.

He cited Chelvanayagam talking of “genocide against the Tamils,” in 1974 itself to the CHOGM delegates who had come to Colombo.

In his lecture, Justice Wigneswaran brought out the entire dimensions of the past and present genocide as well as the future agenda of the Sinhala polity in a nutshell.

He also asserted on historical sovereignty and remedial sovereignty of Tamils, even though he has not mentioned them by name.

He cautioned the Sri Lankan State that, “The very repression adopted to prevent a clamour for separation, might give rise to the International Community becoming convinced that separation is the only solution to the Group affected. The ground situation could convince them that external self determination is to be preferred to internal self determination in the light of what they observe.”

Gaining the confidence of the majority community by the tactic of denouncing separatism has not worked, he said citing especially the current plight of Muslims. He said that he fully endorses the view of the TNA in not joining the bandwagon in a Parliamentary Select Committee for talks without working documents to start with.

Justice Wigneswaran was saintly in talking on the unity of Tamil people, unity of Tamil political parties, exclusivism that relegated an inferior and insulting position to a section of our people, the Karmig boomerang, collective approach, engaging with the Sinhalese people to educate them on shared history and on the injustices meted out to Tamils etc.

He made a valuable observation on accepting the injustice caused to the Muslims and forging solidarity with them.

* * *

However, the latter part of the lecture of Justice Wigneswaran implied that he was telling all the above just for the ‘reconciliation’ process with non-descript solutions and without bearings, alternative Tamil political activists in the island commented.

Further comments from them follow:

The only well-defined bearing in the lecture was once again ‘treading the failed beaten path’ shown by the Establishments in retaining the unity of the State in the island.

But he was critical of Tamils bent on continuing to tread the beaten path and one of them was the path of separatism.

He was careful in avoiding the word Eezham and was asserting to the identity “we Sri Lankan Tamils,” while in his ancestral district Trincomalee the occupying Sinhala military was assaulting people of the village Ilangkaith-thu’rai for even uttering the word Ilangkai in the name of their village; demanding them to say “Lanka-patuna” instead.

Like the ICG reports, he detracted the diaspora polity. He implied scepticism on expecting anything positive from the feelings prevailing in Tamil Nadu.

Pre-empting any mobilisation of masses addressing against the ultimate culprits, he painted a rosy picture that the International Community has just now only realised the diabolical and double-tongued nature of Colombo’s polity.

Detracting Tamils from internationalising their cause for liberation, he was harping on agitations for internal self-determination.

He called for the diaspora to contribute to ‘development’.

He was talking of meeting legal challenges faced by affected individuals, challenging illegal state ventures, seeking justice for those who lost all during the war, pursuing accountability of those who caused it etc., and ‘internationalising’ only such issues.

Encouraging Tamils to fight by counting trees, but politically tiring them by giving time and space to the Sri Lankan State to create more trees, ultimately to make Tamils to compromise with the larger issue of their own structural genocide is the on-going game now, commented the political activists, citing that all what was said in the latter part of the Justice’s lecture was nothing but what the Establishments that waged the war against Eezham Tamils had told them after the war.

The Lecture only shows that in his intellectual prowess, skills and approach, the Colombo-born-bred and educated retired Justice Wigneswaran could easily surpass any one currently in the TNA, or for that matter any one currently ‘articulating’ in the diaspora polity, in insinuating Tamils with the agenda of the Establishments, the alternative political activists further commented.

• 2013 Chelva Memorial Lecture by Justice C.V. Wigneswaran

SL military operatives attack ITAK meeting in Ki'linochchi, 20 wounded

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 March 2013, 08:04 GMT]
Four Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians, Mavai Senathirajah, S. Sritharan, E. Saravanapavan and MA Sumanthiran, who visited Ki'linochchi Saturday for a meeting at Sritharan MP's office, were besieged by a Sinhala mob, numbering more than 100, that attacked the meeting at 11:00 a.m. The alleged SL military intelligence operatives, carrying Lion flags, were shouting slogans against the TNA and were pelting stones on the public meeting. 20 people have sustained injuries. The public providing security to the TNA parliamentarians caught two of the Sinhala attackers. However, the SL police, who came to the site 75 minutes after the report of the attack, allowed the two alleged military personnel to walk free without detaining them for investigations. The brutal assault has been carried out in a similar fashion as the attack reported at Thellippazhai in Jaffna in June 2011.

Five of the injured people have been admitted at Ki'linochchi hospital.

The attacking group, stormed the site from all the four directions, started to pelt stones at the meeting and at the vehicles parked outside.

The SL Police came to the site only after 12:15 p.m.

TNA Spokesperson Suresh Premachandran MP, who convened a press conference at Jaffna Press Club, immediately after the initial reports, blamed SL military intelligence for the attack.

The meeting by TNA parliamentarians are continuing their meeting from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Chronology:

30.03.13  SL military operatives attack ITAK meeting in Ki'l..

25.06.11  Sri Lankan peace group admits level of SL military..

25.06.11  Left Front protests against SLA attack on TNA in J..

24.06.11  SL Army orders against renting halls to TNA, polit..

21.06.11  After ‘eradication’ of 30 years of conflict Sri La..

18.06.11  SLA commanders of the assault could be identified:..

16.06.11  SL Army brutally attacks public meeting of politic..

Missing ITAK representative in Jaffna under ‘investigation’ in Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 January 2012, 15:22 GMT]
The organizer of Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) in Jaffna city and a former representative of Jaffna University Student Union, Mr. Arnold, has been reported missing after being invited to Colombo by a person yet to be identified. Arnold has been allegedly abducted and subjected to investigations by the Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lankan Police in Colombo, informed circles in Jaffna said.

The family of Mr. Arnold has not been informed by the Sri Lankan Police. The last message the family had after losing contact with him was that he had been invited by authorities in Colombo.

The TNA circles remain tight-lipped on the alleged abduction and investigations on their representative in Jaffna.

Sri Lankan authorities have recently been harassing TNA members elected to the civic bodies in the peninsula.

Mr. Arnold has been employed in an insurance company, according to his friends who complain that the TNA or ITAK have failed raising the issue with the authorities in Colombo.

Recently, a TNA representative of Valikaamam North Pirathesa Chapai was subjected to attack at Cheanthaan-ku'lam by the Sri Lanka Navy.

The house of the representative of Valveddiththu'rai (VVT) Town Council was subjected to attack by unknown persons and the electricity link to the house was cut off.

The president of Kaarainakar Piratheasa Chapai was also attacked while he was on duty.

The young members elected to the civic bodies in Jaffna on TNA tickets complain that the TNA hierarchy engaged in “talks” with the Sri Lankan government fails to voice for the rights of their members.

ority ITAK members welcome civil society report, seek course-correction

Majority ITAK members welcome civil society report, seek course-correction

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 January 2012, 14:16 GMT]
Majority of the key members of the Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK), who met Friday for a central committee meeting at the residence of TNA parliamentary group leader Mr. Rajavarothayam Sampanthan in Trincomalee, have welcomed the recent memorandum submitted by leading members of the Tamil civil society. Calling the TNA leaders to engage with the civil society, the ITAK group sought a course-correction in the process. Two civil society and ITAK senior members, and signatories, Professor emeritus of Archaeology, S.K. Sitrampalam, an ITAK stalwart, and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Hindu Civilisation of Jaffna University, Mrs. Naachiyar Selvanayagam, were present at the committee meeting and explained their concerns of accountability. The meeting resolved that Mr. Sampanthan should engage with the civil society as early as possible in January 2012.

The ITAK members said the concerns raised by the civil society were real and criticized those who attempted to brush away the valid criticisms put forward by the civil society.

The process of negotiation between GoSL and the TNA so far has been non-transparent even within the ITAK and the TNA, according to many of the participants at the central committee meeting.

Even the elected parliamentarians of the TNA have been kept away from the process without any knowledge, the members pointed out.

Many ITAK members also said that the impression created by those involved in the negotiations have raised serious concerns of a deviatory line.

• A Public Memo to Members of Parliament representing the TNA from the Tamil Civil Society

The memorandum submitted by the civil society had urged firmness of leadership in political stand in convincing India and the US of the indispensability of addressing fundamentals of the aspirations of Eezham Tamils, i.e., nation and the right to self-determination.

The ITAK members also argued that the 80% of the civil society signatories to the memorandum, have worked for the TNA in the past elections without having any personal political ambitions. The civil society signatories included physicians, academics, civil representatives, engineers, lawyers and religious leaders, it is wrong to view them as having any political agenda behind the memorandum move, ITAK members said.

Two days before the meeting in Trincomalee, TNA MP Mr. Sritharan, who met the press at his residence in Jaffna on Wednesday, also put forward a crucial message welcoming the memorandum and said how the people of NorthEast in 2004 and 2010 placed genuine hope on TNA that TNA will stand committed to the fundamentals of the Eezham Tamil Nation.

Central committee meeting also discussed the long pending suggestion of formally registering the TNA. The suggestion had met opposition from some ITAK stalwarts and associates of Mr. Maavai Senathiraja, particularly Mr. C.V.K Sivagnanam, Mr. Kuganathan and Mr. Kanagasapathy, informed sources said.

However, many of the members who met in Trincomalee on Friday were of the view that the TNA should be registered.

When questions were raised on what role ITAK would play in the registered body of the TNA, a consensus was reached among the ITAK members on finding a formula acceptable to both the ITAK and other parties in the alliance. Arguing that ITAK members have had key positions in the TNA, the formula should pave way for continued wider significance of the ITAK in having a lead role in the TNA also in the future was the majority opinion among the ITAK members.

The meeting also resolved to include M.A. Sumanthiran, K. Sritharan, Yogeswaran, E. Saravanapan and P. Ariyaneththiran in the central committee of the ITAK.

The ITAK members also discussed holding a national convention of the party and Batticaloa was suggested as the venue for a such convention.

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ITAK activists threatened by SLA intelligence operatives in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 December 2011, 14:34 GMT]
Activists of the Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) in Mullaiththeevu of Vanni, who were engaged in organizing party activities this week have been threatened with death by intelligence operatives of the Sri Lanka Army, sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet. The intimidation by the occupying SLA has come following the leading activists of the ITAK Mr.C.V.K.Sivagnanam and Mr. Kunanayagam, went to the district distributing forms to enrol members to the party. The SLA intelligence personnel have targeted the activists of the party in Mullaiththeevu for accepting these forms.

SLA intelligence operatives trespassed into the house of the ITAK volunteers and seized all forms at gun point. Those refused to hand over such forms have been threatened with death, according to the sources.

The SLFP of SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa is given free hand to take forward its political agenda in the district.

While the activities of ITAK and other TNA member parties remain virtually banned in Mullaiththeevu by the SLA, the presence of paramilitay groups of Karuna and Devananda, and the associates of Namal Rajapakse, the son of Mahinda Rajapaksa, have been increased in the district.

In the meantime, ITAK central committee meeting was held on Friday at the residence of Mr.Sampanthan in Trincomalee. Seven parliamentarians attended the meeting along with other members.