"We have no confidence in the proposed Parliamentary Select Committee as that will also be a strategy adopted by the government to delay the process of finding a solution to the ethnic question," TNA spokesman and Jaffna District MP Suresh Premachandran told The Island yesterday.
His comments came in the wake of government spokesman and Media Minister Keheliya Rambuwella’s statement at the weekly Cabinet news conference last week that the government would wait for the TNA to participate in the Parliamentary Select Committee and that it was willing to wait as long as it took.
Premachandran said that his party had not decided whether to take part in the Select Committee process or not until yesterday. "How can we expect the government to provide us solutions to the ethnic question in the North and the East through a PSC when it cannot negotiate with the TNA independently and come to a solution?"
"The government was unwilling to go ahead with the negotiations with the TNA," Premachandra said.
Responding to a question whether the TNA was still pursuing its earlier stand on self-determination, he said that his party had told the government on what basis power could be devolved to the two provinces.
By Ravi Ladduwahetty
IS
