Moragoda advising Gotabaya prompts Sinhala parties to scrap Provincial Councils

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 June 2020, 23:29 GMT]
Former SL Minister Milinda Moragoda, who conspired with western powers to create an ‘international safety-net’ for Colombo during the Norway-led peace process, is now demanding the Sinhala political parties to make their stand on the provincial councils. Mr Moragoda, whose Pathfinder Foundation is advising SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has urged the political parties to repeal the 13th Amendment, reported Colombo-based EconomyNext on Monday. The move to do away with the PCs was aimed at the deterritorialisation of the Tamil homeland, commented Tamil political observers in Jaffna. The rulers of the occupying unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka were also looking for creative ways to de-legitimise the validity of the 1987 Indo-Lanka accord to re-negotiate external powers’ strategic access to strategic Trincomalee harbour, they further commented.

Mr Rajapaksa's 11-member all Sinhala Presidential Task Force for “Archaeological Heritage Management” in the Eastern Province should also be viewed in this context, the political observers in Jaffna said.

The parties [in the South] should “clearly state their positions on the Provincial Council system in their policy platforms for the forthcoming general elections,” Mr Moragoda was quoted as saying by the Colombo-based news outlet.

While canvassing to repeal the PCs, Moragoda was proposing a bicameral assembly to address issues concerning religious, ethnic, and regional diversity.

The think-tanker was projecting his case as a cost-benefit argument.

Milinda Moragoda is extensively focused on ‘Sri Lanka - China’, ‘Sri Lanka - US’ and ‘Indo-Lanka’ relations.

He was bracketed with Norwegian peace envoy Erik Solheim and was attempting to trap the LTTE through the so-called Oslo Declaration of 2002.

From the money Norway spent on the island during the peace process between 2002 and 2009, Mr Moragoda’s institution received the single largest monetary assistance meant for any NGOs.

Milinda Moragoda Institute received 60 million Norwegian kroners (six million USD). The funding was noted as “one important exception” in the evaluation of the Norwegian peace efforts carried out by Chr Michelsen Institute in Norway and the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London in 2011.



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Moragoda wants the 13th Amendment repealed to abolish “dysfunctional, expensive” Provincial Councils