By

Ravi Ladduwahetty

Northern Provincial Council Opposition Leader Sinnathurai Thavarajah charged yesterday (27) that the TNA led Northern Provincial Council (NPC) could not get even its legislation right despite Chief Minister C.V. Vigneswaran being a retired Supreme Court judge.

“This is serious, that the TNA has submitted only three statutes within the last one year, two of which have been passed and the third, which has been rejected,” Thavarajah charged at a news conference at the Information Department auditorium yesterday, to mark the first anniversary of the NPC in office.
He also said that he pointed out the flaws in one of the finance statutes which was passed when he addressed the NPC sessions from 9:50 a.m. to 6:15 p.m., uninterrupted except for the lunch and tea breaks, which the TNA had later accepted as true and correct.

He claimed that he would have submitted four statutes per month had he been the Chief Minister.
He also alleged that the third statute, for the establishment of a Chief Minister’s Fund, was rejected by the Governor, being in contravention of the Constitution.

Further outlining the TNA hypocrisy, Thavarajah, himself twice EPDP Jaffna District MP, told journalists that the TNA was crying foul over the military presence in the Jaffna peninsula when there was a vast reduction in army occupied land, which now constituted a mere 3.8% of the land area.
It is ridiculous for the TNA to scream about the army presence which was for security reasons. The army presence now is only 67,000 acres of the 2,110,000 acres in the Jaffna peninsula. There is no way that agriculture and farming has been impacted due to the military presence, Thavarajah remarked.

He also said that the TNA hypocrisy was further compounded by the delegation which met South African Vice President Jacob Zuma in 2009 and had insisted that they meet in a Jaffna hotel as they [the TNA] did not have a proper office.

Thavarajah, continuing his tirade against the TNA, told journalists: “This is a blatant and diabolical untruth at a time when the TNA was paying a monthly rent of Rs 325,000 for its office and a further Rs 50,000 for a residence when for Rs 25,000 one could rent out a good house unlike in Colombo.”

“The TNA duped the Northern voters that they could get the army and the Governor removed from Jaffna when it could not get even a soldier transferred from the peninsula and that was how they rode to their four-fifth majority victory,” he quipped.

The TNA’s effort to remove Chief Secretary Vijayalakshmi Ramesh had also backfired, he said.

He quoted President Mahinda Rajapaksa as having asked the NPC during his visit to Jaffna whether the Rs 89 billion that the government had spent since 2009 was for only for the Jaffna District or for the entire North due to the enormity of the amount amidst ripples of laughter from journalists; Thavarajah asserted that the Rs 89 billion that the government spent had been only for the Jaffna District.

Courtesy:Ceylon Today