New date for President-TNA talks ‘to be notified in due course’

By MSV On Jun 15, 2021

Sri Lankan Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader Rajavarothiam Sampathan gestures during a press conference in Colombo on December 30, 2014. Sri Lanka's largest Tamil party has endorsed the main opposition candidate in next week's election, accusing President Mahinda Rajapakse of failing to deliver reconciliation after the country's ethnic war.. AFP PHOTO / ISHARA S. KODIKARA (Photo credit should read Ishara S.KODIKARA/AFP/Getty Images)

COLOMBO: A meeting between Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and a delegation of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), scheduled to be held on Wednesday, stands postponed, according to the TNA.

Earlier on Tuesday, a statement issued by TNA spokesman and Jaffna legislator M. A. Sumanthiran said the TNA was meeting the President on June 16, to discuss ways of taking forward the process of constitutional reform.

“The TNA sent its proposals for constitutional reform to the experts’ committee appointed by the President last December, and thereafter met the committee at their invitation in February this year,” it said.

However, on Tuesday night, the TNA said in a statement: “The meeting that was scheduled to be held between the delegation of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and President Gotabaya Rajapaksha tomorrow (16) at the Presidential secretariat has been postponed. The new date and time of the said meeting will be notified in due course.”

The meeting was to be Mr. Rajapaksa’s first –since he assumed office in November 2019 — with the TNA, whose leader and 88-year-old parliamentarian R. Sampanthan has, over the last decade, spearheaded the call for the long-pending political solution to Sri Lanka’s national question, through a constitutional settlement.

The alliance, currently with 10 MPs, is the main grouping representing Tamils of the north and east in the 225-member legislature.