|
||||||||||||
|
|
|
| ||||||||||
|
RANIL IS NOW HEADING A MINORITY
GOVERNMENT AND THE LTTE HAS A STRANGLEHOLD OF HIM BOTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE
PARLIAMENT By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles The Ranil Wickremesinghe government, which had lost its simple majority in the parliament, was sustaining itself by a “media magic” charged the spokesman of the People’s Alliance, Dr. Sarath Amunugama. He said in an interview with this correspondent over the telephone that information was collected, filtered, altered and then distributed among the newspapers and broadcasting stations depriving the people of Sri lanka their right to know the truth. Amunugama, an experienced former media man and Member of Parliament of the Kandy District said the media of Sri Lanka today was under an unofficial censorship and many leading newspapers and broadcasting stations in the island nation had no option other than to publish the doctored material as news. He charged the questionable propaganda was operated out of an office in the Prime Minister’s residence. Dr. Sarath Amunugama said the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration turned into a minority government, October 10, as it could muster only 108 votes for its Electricity Reform Bill although it needed 113 votes for a simple majority in the nation’s parliament. Dr. Amunugama charged that the Tamil National Alliance was nothing but the puppet of the terrorists of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. He further said out of the 108 votes the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration could obtain at the voting of the bill 10 came from the terrorist puppets and that also after a back door meeting in which the government agreed to review certain sections of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The Ranil Wickremesinghe administration could survive only by pandering to the Tamil National Alliance, Dr. Amunugama charged. He said this had created an extremely dangerous situation for the country because the Liberation Tigers of Tamil was now obtaining a stranglehold of the government both inside and outside parliament. Dr. Amunugama explained that this situation had arisen because the UNF coalition partner, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress was divided over matters connected to the LTTE and the government and nine MP’s of the Muslim Congress were boycotting the parliament over the burning issue of the Eastern Province. Dr. Amunugama said he was calling upon the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration to explain its own policy regarding the administration of the Eastern Province. The PA spokesman charged that this government was maintaining a deafening silence regarding the issue of the de-merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces. He said the People’s Alliance policy was that there should be a referendum for all the people of the Eastern Province to decide whether they wanted a merger with the North or not. Dr. Amunugama charged that serious problems in the Eastern Province were cropping up because the silence of the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration over the issue and due to that the Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim communities did not know what was in store for them. Dr. Amunugama said the PA had always maintained that if the government had any discussions those negotiations should be on the core issues. The present problems had been created, he said, due to the lack of any such discussions and settlements. Meanwhile the LTTE was intruding beyond the limitations of the Memorandum of Understanding, he charged. He said lot of misunderstandings and tensions had been created because
of the silence of the Prime Minister on these issues about the Eastern
Province in the recent past and a lot more could be created soon because
of the same reason.
|
||||||||||||
|
|
BACK TO LATEST NEWS Copyright
© 1997-2001www.lankaweb.Com
Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved. |
|||||||||||
