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| Friday, 23 January 2004 |
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Politics | |
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| Statement issued by UNP on SLFP-JVP MoU The launching of the JVP/SLFP MoU leaves more questions unanswered than answered. Three documents (one in each language Sinhala, Tamil and English) were released but was any of these the real MoU? Or was it that none of them were and that a fourth secret document was singed some days before? States a UNP spokesman Gayantha Karunatilleke in a press release. But that is only the start of this intriguing episode. Another question that has to be answered is whether all the SLFP members of Parliament were consulted about the MoU before the signing - or was it imposed upon them by a desperate leadership - and will the SLFP now be able to keep their Parliamentary Party together? the release stated. The release: "Certainly the first four pages of the MoU bear little resemblance to reality. The MoU talks about all the supposed wickedness of the UNP Government. It describes the supposed failures of the peace process, yet week after week for the past two years the President has chaired the Cabinet meetings where joint decisions were taken about the peace process, the legislative programme and the economic program. By attacking the policies of the UNP Government, the signatories of the MoU were attacking their own President. So who do they really blame for all the supposed mistakes, the UNF Government or the Executive President with unlimited powers at her fingertips? Then the MoU talks about the UNP attempting to set up a one party, police state dictatorship with a stranglehold on the media. But wasn't it the President on November 4 last year who seized three Ministries without following the democratic process and who acted like a dictator, sneaking her actions whilst the democratically elected Prime Minister of the country was abroad? Equally isn't the President who today presides over the state media which has become so biased in its reporting that viewship, listenership and readership numbers are dropping off in their thousands? Also isn't it the President who presides over the armed forces and police and yet has failed to do anything about the supposed LTTE naval zone, the pressure on the High Security Zones, the supposed LTTE camps around Trincomalee and the abduction of 'thousands of innocent Tamil children'? And wasn't it the President who insisted that the Prime Minister continue to run the peace process in December when he offered to hand it over to her. If the UNF government and the Prime Minister was doing such a bad job why didn't she take control of the peace process? If the UNP were so all powerful why does the President hold those key ministries and why has she done so little with them? The JVP and the SLFP might also like to answer why it was that crime under the UNP was falling and in the last two months it has started rising again. Over the next few days, the United National Party intends to expose further the lies and deceit behind this supposed MoU but for now we seek to ask one final question. The last person in history to refer to a 'final solution' was fascist leader Adolf Hitler. He destroyed the whole of Europe and murdered six million people. With the past record of the fascist JVP, can they assure us that such methods will not be applied against any political opponents, ethnic or religious groups who oppose them in the future? For the people of Sri Lanka this has to be the most frightening set of documents published for many years." |
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