Maiden meeting between Sri Lankan president and TNA postponed

No new date was informed to us so far, M A Sumanthiran, a prominent Tamil National Alliance legislator, told PTI.He said no reason for the postponement of the meeting had been indicated to them.The TNA remains hopeful that the postponed meeting would take place soon and would open up the dialogue between the main Tamil party and the majority nationalist president.

The first-ever meeting between Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and a delegation of the island nation's main Tamil party TNA, scheduled to be held on Wednesday to discuss the constitutional reform process, has been postponed without citing any reason, the party said.

"We were informed that the meeting fixed for today has been postponed. No new date was informed to us so far,'' M A Sumanthiran, a prominent Tamil National Alliance legislator, told PTI.

He said no reason for the postponement of the meeting had been indicated to them.

The TNA remains hopeful that the postponed meeting would take place soon and would open up the dialogue between the main Tamil party and the majority nationalist president. Sumanthiran said they had asked if the president was willing to meet them and discuss the TNA's paper sent to the experts' committee appointed by Rajapaksa in December 2020.

Rajapaksa responded indicating he would meet a delegation of TNA, Sumanthiran said.

The meeting was the first-ever between Rajapaksa, who had openly declared that he was elected by the Sinhala majority but would be open to addressing minority concerns.

He lamented that minorities had refused to be part of his November 2019 presidential election victory.

The TNA wants the 13th Amendment to be made meaningful to address the political concerns of the Tamil minority.

However, Rajapaksa's public statements reflected his keenness to abolish the system of provincial councils which became part of the Sri Lankan Constitution through the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 between then-premier Rajiv Gandhi and the then Sri Lankan President Junius Jayawardena.

India at all times has insisted that they would want Sri Lanka to pursue the 13A as the tool to address Tamil concerns on devolution of power.

The amendment is aimed at creating provincial councils in Sri Lanka and enable Sinhalese and Tamil as national languages while preserving English as the link language.

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