Sri Lanka: TNA’s Great Treachery against Tamils

The TNA could gain massive victory at the 2004 General Election by committing serious offences that amount to treason.

by V. Anandasangaree

Democracy in Sri Lanka, in the North and the East in particular, completely got derailed with certain difficulties for its revival. Regrettably the indifference shown by many, causes a lot of pain of mind and the future of the Tamil people appears to be very bleak, with hardly any progress since 2004. Brushing a side the disgrace he is facing by sabotaging the activities of a popular political party founded by two great Tamil personalities  Hon. S.J.V. Chelvanayagam QC and G.G. Ponnampalam QC, how fraudulently Mr. R. Sampanthan won the 22 seats to Parliament in 2004 is still a mistery. Although belated I have a moral duty to bring it to the notice of the International Community. 

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) avoiding friction within, gave immense trouble to the rival groups which contested the general election of April 2004, such as attacking the rival candidates, organising on a large scale for impersonation, students of schools and universities to fill the ballot boxes with votes of the dead and the displaced persons, disallowing genuine voters from casting their votes, pressurising all public servants and those in charge of polling stations to issue more than one vote for each polling card holder, using at random over 78 motorcycles and six jeeps including a few un registered ones, on the day of polling and during the campaign period, under threat and intimidation preventing the 1104 polling agents of each political party on the basis of 2 agents per polling booth, for each party, from assuming their duties at their respective polling booth assigned to each such person, banning the holding of propaganda meetings, meeting supporters and voters, preventing paper advertisements, allowing some censured ones, performing street dramas all over the Kilinochchi District characterising me(Anandasangaree) in a very low and degrading manner, printing and distributing false information that Anandasangaree had withdrawn from the contest in the interest of unity, cheating the vanni people. 

At the Muhamalai cluster polling stations several thousand people gathered and voted  unbelievably at the rate of 3 per minute with orders given to the concerned officials to allow anyone to cast anybody else’s vote. Very close to the Muhamalai cluster polling stations there were many vehicles packed with TNA candidates and their supporters waiting ready to get engaged in impersonation with orders to the Officials to allow each and every person 5 or 6 votes per head.

All the candidates with the support of the LTTE got themselves engaged in various offences and also allowed them to commit any offence and at the end, put the innocent children of poor parents in to trouble ultimately resulting in their deaths. Mr. Sampanthan and Senathirajah should take the responsibility for the deaths of the young ones. Surprisingly these people are now back in their Parliament seats, making democracy a mockery. 

What is said here is in no way exaggerated but only the truth had been brought out. All what is said now mainly relates to election matters. But apart from this what happened during the one and a half month of election period, such as violation of fundamental rights, use of unauthorised power of the public servants and many such other violation had also taken place. Taken as a whole, several events that took place in the North and the East will amount to serious offences not excluding the offence of treason, as I see it.  

This incident, unheard of in the history of this country had shaken the country’s foundation. It had missed the opportunity of saving thousands of lives. I have enough evidence to prove the atrocious conduct of this group and their supporters. If the media and the media people fail to bring this incident to the public, it will weaken our future generation. It is not proper to bring religion in this issue. The TNA must find some other way is also my frank opinion.

V. Anandasangaree, Secretary-General, Tamil United Liberation Front