Colombo, June 15 (newsin.asia): The Governor of Sri Lanka’s Tamil majority Northern Province, Reginold Cooray, has said that he will ask Chief Minister C.V.Wigneswaran to prove majority support in the Provincial Council at the earliest, after 21 members of the council intimated to him on Wednesday, their decision to move a motion of no-confidence against the Chief Minister.
The letter to the Governor was sent by 21 members of the council, out of whom, 19 had placed their signatures and two more were heading to Jaffna from Colombo to place their signatures. Twenty votes are enough to carry the Motion of No-Confidence as the total strength of the Council is 38.
Therefore, in all likelihood the Chief Minister will resign. In that case, the Council could elect a new Chief Minister and a new Board of Ministers.
Wigneswaran’s Moves
The embattled Wigneswaran is already planning his next political move. The Tamil Peoples’ Council (TPC) which he formed some time ago ,is meeting on Thursday and is set to organize protest rallies across the Northern Province.
The TPC will have the support of the pro-LTTE Tamil National Peoples’ Front led by Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) led by Suresh Premachandran, a party of ex-LTTE cadres led by N.Vithiatharan, a section of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) and a rump of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) run by V.Anandaangaree.
The grouping is expected to be called the United Front and will fight the ruling Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in the next elections to be held 15 months from now, unless the Council is dissolved earlier.
The Crisis
The crisis in the NPC arose as aesult of the Chief Minister’s decision to re-order a probe against two ministers after a distinguished and independent panel of experts had cleared them of all allegations of corruption and maladministration.
Since last year, there had been charges against all the four ministers. These charges were probed by a commission of three members, comprising two retired judges of the High Court and a retired senior public servant.
The panel found the Ministers if Health and Fisheries, P.Sathiyalingam and B.Deniswaran respectively, not guilty, and the Ministers of Agriculture (P.Ayngaranesan) and Education (T.Kurukularaja) guilty.
But the Chief Minister asked all four to step down and ordered a fresh inquiry against the exonerated ministers. This was interpreted as vendetta. And at any rate there was dissatisfaction with the way Wigneswaran had been running the administration.
(The featured image at the top shows Northern Province Chief Minister C.V.Wigneswaran greeting provincial Governor Reginold Cooray)
