No Tamils in Lanka consulted on transnational government

No Tamils resident in Sri Lanka was consulted when the overseas wings of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) decided to form a Provisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (PTGTE) nor were they  included in the committee to go into the nitty gritty of the formation of such a government.“

We were not consulted. We learnt about this kind of government only through the media,” said Mavai Senathirajah, MP and general secretary of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).

Asked if PTGTE was possible and whether it would serve the Tamils’ purpose, Senathirajah said that it was too early to say anything as the committee was working on the details and are yet to come out with a report.

“When the committee’s report comes out, we may be able to comment on it,” he told Express on Sunday.

The international wing of the LTTE, working under Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias KP, had appointed US-based lawyer Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran as the chairman of the committee to go into the detail of the formation of PTGTE and an international advisory committee was also formed. In both, there were no Tamils resident in Sri Lanka.  Senathirajah, however, said that the issues which the PTGTE would be tackling were of no immediate and direct concern to the TNA and other Tamil political leaders in ground zero, namely, the Tamil-speaking north and east of Sri Lanka.

TAMIL MP JOINS GOVT SIDE: Meanwhile, one of the TNA MPs, Sivanathan Kishore, decided to support the Mahinda Rajapaksa government’s efforts to look after and resettle the war refugees in north Sri Lanka. As the TNA threatened to take action against him for taking an independent stand, Kishore told Lakbimanews on Sunday that the alliance could not take any action against him because he was not a member of any of the constituent political parties. “I had fought the last elections as an independent candidate on a TNA ticket,” he argued.