"We are not party to Vitarne Report"- WPF

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 January 2008, 12:23 GMT]
General Secretary of Western Peoples Front (WPF) in a press release issued Friday said, "Minister Tissa Vitarana has used the name of our party among other parties for his interim report he submitted to the [Sri Lanka's] president. By listing the name of our party, Western Peoples Front (WPF), he is giving an impression that we too are in agreement with his submission. This is a regrettable sinister move of the veteran samasamajist minister..."

Vitarane report listed fourteen parties and mentioned that the said "parties have engaged in the APRC discussions though one omitted in signing agreement for the draft."

Reintroducing the two decade-old amendment drafted as part of the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement, the Chairman of the All Party Representative Committee (APRC), Prof. Tissa Vitharana, said, "The APRC Proposals provide ingress towards the maximum devolution of power within the Unitary State," confounding the readers using a term commonly used in digital technology and in legal property matters, to describe the "entry" of the APRC proposal to devolve power.

Questioning the need to reintroduce an already active legislative instrument, the press release said: "13th amendment is already law. What is pending is the implementation of the same."

The statement added: "Failure to implement what is already law is the sole business of the government. The All Party Conference and the APRC were formed to discuss and develop a set of new constitutional proposals addressing what is referred as the ethnic problem or the Tamil problem," and said, "If Tissa Vithrana committee is going to submit proposals on ways to implement what is already law, it cannot anymore be considered as an APC or APRC and with all the national and international recognition attached to it," reflecting the failure of the APRC to carryout its original mandate.