TULF leader defends Chandrika

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 November 1997, 23:59 GMT]
TULF leader Mr. M. Sivasithamparam came under fire for attempting to justify the actions of President Chandrika Kumaranatunge in a television program in which he appeared this afternoon.

In the course of this interview cum discussion on local TV, the human right's lawyer Ms. Maheswary Velayuthapillai pointed out, while posing a question, that it was highly unlikely that President Chandrika Kumaranatunge could offer a viable solution to the ethnic conflict in view of the fact that Tamils have never before faced such indiscriminate arrest, detention and other hardships as they now do under her rule.

Responding to Ms.Velayuthapillai, the apparently agitated TULF leader said that things much more worse than this have happened to the Tamils earlier in 83 July, at Kokkaddicholai etc.

He also argued that Chandrika is not a product of the SLFP but belonged to the party of her husband Vijaya Kumaranatunge and that she is a person educated in Sorbonne with leftist leanings.

In the course of the interview he welcomed the package though with some minor reservations.

Many Colombo based Tamil party leaders were highly critical of Mr.Sivasithamparam for playing down the atrocities perpetrated on the Tamils in the Northeast and in Colombo today under the PA regime's war program by drawing attention to the calamities which befell them during the UNP's rule.

EROS general Secretary Mr. Sudhaharan said that the TULF leader conducted himself today as though he was President Chandrika Kumaranatunge's personal secretary.

TULF leaders in the east said that they were positively shocked by Mr. Sivasithamparam's attitude.

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