Udayan trying to create controversies - Angajan Ramanadhan

Ridma Dissanayake and Rakshana Sriyantha

The Udayan newspaper has published another article on May 31 under the title "Controversy in Eastern governance aggravating. The programme aborted by the Chief Minister is recommenced by Minister Hakeem."

The paper has published this article with the aim of provoking racism between the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka. Udayan tries to highlight that there are internal opinion clashes among different parties belong to the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA).

Commenting on this article, Jaffna District Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) Chief Organizer Angajan Ramanadhan said: "We can see controversial situations and opinion clashes in every Provincial Council. They can be created among politicians belonging to different political parties and among members in the same party. That is the nature of the political field."

"Do they think that the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has no conflict among its members? TNA is the political party which is suffering the most with opinion conflicts among its members.

It is facing such controversial situations since the party's registration," he said. Several newspapers also reported that the opinion of TNA Leader R. Sambandhan is different from the opinion of other members of the party.

Therefore, highlighting the opinion clashes among UPFA members attached to the Eastern Provincial Council can be seen as an aggressive attempt of Udayan to create a bad image of the UPFA among the people living in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. There is another side to this.

The TNA tried to gain power of the Eastern Provincial Council with the assistance of the Muslim Congress and the United National Party. But the Muslim Congress decided to support the UPFA and TNA's attempt failed, he said.

They are using several medias partial to them to make their efforts successful. But it damages media ethics and it also becomes a threat to the reconciliation process of the country.

"We should remember that opinion clashes and controversial situations in governance is a common thing.

"Moving forward with these to produce a good result at the end is the most important thing," he said.