"We want to hold elections in September 2013. We are working towards it in a systematic manner,"
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that elections to the Northern Provincial Council will be held in September 2013.
"We want to hold elections in September 2013. We are working towards it in a systematic manner," he told The Hindu’s Colombo correspondent R. K. Radhakrishnan in an interview published yesterday.
The president said there are many issues to be resolved ahead of holding the polls. The primary one relates to the electoral rolls. People who fled when the Tamil Tigers were in power and during the war are still coming in and staking claim to their land and property after the Tigers’ defeat in May 2009. They too have to be accommodated in the rolls.
The rolls now in use are more than 30 years old. They have no relation to the current eligible voters in the province.
The second issue, according to him, is the completion of the rehabilitation and resettlement process. This is on with international support and is expected to be completed soon. Livelihood issues too are being addressed.
The holding of elections holds the key to moving forward on the question of granting Tamils the political space they lack. In fact, this should have been possible soon after the India-Sri Lanka accord of 1987 (later called the 13th Amendment because the Sri Lankan Constitution was subsequently amended to include this provision), which also had a clause on devolution of powers.
The amendment benefitted all the other regions. Barring the North, all the others have provincial councils.
Answering a question on the excessive visibility of the Army in all walks of life in the Northern Province, Rajapaksa said he has instructed that the Army should be visible only when required.
Rajapaksa refused to agree that the Indian vote against Sri Lanka in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva last March was because Colombo did not implement the promises it made to the Council in 2009.
Insisting that his government has worked on all the promises that were delivered and is serious about fulfilling all undertakings that were given, he said he has even said that he is willing to go beyond the 13th Amendment.
Clarifying for the first time what the plus was, the president explained this was the creation of a Senate. "I said 13th Amendment plus." When Indian National Security Adviser Sivshankar Menon asked if the president meant the creation of a Senate, and "I said yes."
Menon had met Rajapaksa on June 29 on post-Geneva issues. India is the chair for the Universal Periodic Review at the UNHRC that comes up in November.
Rajapaksa made it clear that the creation of a Senate and the fleshing out of a solution need to come from Parliament.
"This is [where] the Parliamentary Select Committee is important," he said. When the reporter brought to his notice the plight of five fishermen from Tamil Nadu, who had been held in a Jaffna prison since November 28, 2011, he said he will first ascertain the facts. He called the Inspector-General of Police and received an update on the issue.
(Island)