Jaffna MP's assume office despite EPDP objections

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 April 1999, 16:48 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Court of Appeal today refused an application made by the EPDP on April 12 for a stay order restraining Mohammed Sultan Rahim and Suppaiah Jeganathan, who were appointed MPs for Jaffna by the Commissioner of Elections on April 9, from taking oaths in Parliament tomorrow.

The EPDP filed a case in the Court of Appeal against the appointments, citing as respondents the Commissioner of Elections, the Jaffna GA and three persons on the list of its candidates who contested the elections to Parliament in 1994 and who obtained the next highest number of preference votes after R. Rameswaran and R. Ramamoorthy, the two EPDP MPs, whose dismissal by the group was held valid by the Supreme court in March.

The Court of Appeal ordered that notice be issued on the respondents to file answers within a month.

The ruling by the Court of Appeal today will enable Suppaiah Jeganthan and Mohammed Sultan Rahim to take oaths in Parliament tomorrow as MPs for Jaffna.

The EPDP is objecting to their appointment because Jeganthan and Rahim had contested the Parliament elections in 1994 on the EPDP's list of candidates as nominees of the UNP.

Another candidate on the list, N. Sivarajah who has also been cited as a respondent in this case, is an organiser of the UNP in Jaffna.

The EPDP had very close relations with the UNP when it contested the elections to Parliament in 1994.

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