TULF team in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 December 1998, 20:23 GMT]
A four member team of the TULF arrived in Jaffna by a special Sri Lankan military flight today to revive the function of the Jaffna Municipal Council. The team is in Jaffna with a mandate to ratify the Council's budget for 1999 said party sources.

The members of the special TULF team are S.Ganenthiran, L.Sinnathurai, K.Muhunthan and Aravinthan. The group is led by Ganenthiran, a confidante of Mr.Anandasangari, the vice President of the TULF.

However, Mr.Joseph Pararajasingham MP, the party's Parliamentary group leader, said this evening that he was not aware of anyone from his party taking a special military flight to Jaffna. Another senior leader of the party and former MP, Mr. Maavai Senathirajah denied that a TULF team had gone to Jaffna today to revive the Jaffna Municipal Council. Mr.Raviraj, the TULF MMC who was expected to replace the slain Jaffna Mayor Pon Sivapalan, is away in Germany said party sources.

Details of the meeting to ratify the council's budget for next year are under wraps. However, under the Municipal council by law the budget was on display for public from Dec.7 until today. A notice regarding this was placed in the Jaffna daily Uthayan last week.

Meanwhile, the Jaffna town commander denied a report in the daily today that a grenade of a soldier on duty near the TULF office had accidentally gone off. The explosion on Saturday night close to the TULF office in Jaffna town caused alarm among the troops deployed in the area who opened fire at random into the night.

The SLA town commander said today that the grenade that accidentally went off did not belong to any of his soldiers who were on duty in the area but was one that had been lobbed into a compound near the TULF office. Mr.K.Ganenthiran is the nephew of former PLOTE political wing leader, Ramalingam Vasudeva of Batticaloa and Ramalingam Paramadeva, one of the most senior members of the Liberation Tigers who was killed in Batticaloa in 1984.

A popular Tamil political fortnightly wrote recently that Mr.Ganenthiran had acted as a spotter for the Bambalapitiya Police in Colombo to arrest a youth suspected of being a member of the Liberation Tigers. The Police released the youth when it transpired later he was the son of an TULF stalwart in Batticaloa and had nothing to do with the Tigers.