Only a federal solution will ensure undivided Sri Lanka: TNA

 January 26, 2016
At a time when Sri Lanka is taking steps to draft a new constitution, its main Opposition Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has emphatically said that only a solution based on federalism will ensure an undivided Sri Lanka.

“We will state our position that to the two main parties and the Sinhala people in this country that it is an arrangement that is on federal lines that will best ensure that there will not be a call for the division of the country,” TNA’s Jaffna district parliamentarian M.A Sumanthiran told reporters in Colombo on Tuesday.

Claiming that the concept of federalism is not new to the country, he said that none other the late prime minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike has introduced it in 1926.

Ironically, it’s the same leader who introduced the Sinhala-only policy in 1956, which resulted in Tamil armed struggle.

“The reason perhaps why the “unitary state” is favoured now is because some people think that it is the only way in which you can prevent the country from dividing. We have said that the we don’t want the country to divide. We say that the best way to ensure that the country doesn’t divide is to have a power-sharing arrangement that is in consistent with the principle of federalism,” MP Sumanthiran told the press at the Opposition Leader’s house.

“Then the country won’t divide,” he said.

According to reports, TNA leader R. Sampanthan has already left for the UK to study first-hand the federal practices in Scotland. His close confidante Sumanthiran is expected to join him later this week.