Civil servants in Jaffna threatened to withdraw their support to NPC

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has been refusing to extend his cooperation to the repeated pleas made by the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran to appoint a non-military governor and to install a Chief Secretary capable of extending allegiance to the elected representatives of the NPC, has now gone to the extent of allowing the occupying Sinhala military in Jaffna to harass and threaten the other senior civil officials to render the NPC defunct. While escalating the rift between the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) councillors and the SL governor-installed chief secretary on one hand, the SL military on the other hand subjects the civil servants who extend cooperation to the elected NPC to systematic harassment and intimidation.

Many senior civil servants of the Northern Provincial Council, who have opted to cooperate with the ministers of the NPC, are now being intimidated by the Sri Lankan military system in Jaffna not to cooperate with the ministries of the NPC. The intimidation has been stepped up in the last few days with phone threats and SMS messages originating from phone numbers belonging to the Sri Lankan military intelligence.

The Sri Lankan Police in Jaffna is reluctant to act on the complaints being made by the civil servants on the threats. The police has also advised some of them to withdraw their complaints.

The phone threats to NPC civil servants have been coming from phone numbers 078 636 74 73 and 077 222 69 69. Internal sources with the mobile phone provider confirmed that these phone numbers belong to ‘national security’ authorities.

The latest victims of such threats are S. Sathiyaseelan, the secretary to the NPC ministry of education and K. Giritharan, the chief accountant, legal sources in Jaffna said.

The latest discourse is just another example demonstrating the non-workability of the rotten 13th Amendment under the unitary state system of Sri Lanka, political observers in Jaffna say.

Mr Wigneswaran has been extending a number of pleas to the SL President, first on the issue of non-military governor and then on the chief secretary who was not cooperating with the NPC. The NPC also moved resolutions on both the issues. But, all these efforts were to no avail.

Lacking statesmanship in addressing the archer and the flawed system behind it, the TNA and the Chief Minister of the NPC chose to target the arrow, Ms Wijialudchumi Ramesh, installed by the colonial military governor Major General (retd) G.A. Chandrasiri, the political observers in Jaffna further said.

Colombo has in turn encouraged the SL minister for Industries and Trade, Mr Rishard Badurdeen, who is behind many controversies in Mannaar and Vanni, to interfere in the dog fighting by encouraging the civil servant Wijialudchumi to hold political press conference and meetings in Colombo. A group of Sinhala extremist lawyers and trade unionists have been deployed to keep her locked to the fight.

The lawyers group also considers filing lawsuits under the Sri Lankan judiciary, which in the past did away with the merged North East Provincial Council, news sources in Colombo said.

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