‘SLFP campaign a time buying tactic’ – Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 April 2005, 13:09 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Monday dismissed the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) campaign to explain the Joint Mechanism for distributing Tsunami aid in the northeast as “a time buying tactic to gloss over the fact that it cannot overcome JVP’s strident opposition”. SLFP General Secretary Mr. Maithripala Sirisena said this weekend his party will hold a series of seminars to educate its membership about the proposed joint mechanism. “These seminars are the way out for the SLFP leadership which wants to show donor countries that it is committed to a joint mechanism with the Tamils while saving its alliance with the JVP”, Mr. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam TNA MP for Jaffna told TamilNet.

“JVP has left no room for any doubt regarding its inflexible opposition to the proposed joint mechanism between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers. It is very obvious from the SLFP’s latest statement on its relationship with the JVP that President Kumaratunga is really scared to let the Sinhala nationalists leave her alliance over the joint mechanism”, said Mr. Ponnambalam.

“On the other hand, she wants to keep the donors happy by impressing them she is doing her best to implement it. She wants to have the cake and eat it. This so called campaign to educate her party members about the joint mechanism is a canard to buy time to appease the JVP while keeping the donors happy”, he said.