Minister: Tamils lost P’karan due to 2005 polls boycott

By Shamindra Ferdinando-December 24, 2017

State Minister for Child Affairs Vijayakala Maheswaran (Jaffna District MP) has claimed that the Tamil community wouldn’t have lost their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran if they had voted for UNP candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe at 2005 presidential election.

Maheswaran said so outside Jaffna District Secretariat last Friday (Dec 22) after handing over UNP nomination lists.

Jaffna based Kalaikkathir quoted State Minister Maheswaran as having claimed had the people of the North voted for Wickremesinghe, they wouldn’t have lost their leader and 200,000 people in the Vanni war.

The armed forces brought the war to a successful conclusion on the morning of May 19, 2009 with the killing of Prabhakaran on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon.

There had never been a previous instance of a Jaffna based UNP politician blaming northern presidential polls boycott in Nov 2005 as leading to the LTTE’s battlefield defeat and death of Prabhakaran.

Editor of Kalaikkathir N. Vithyatharan told The Island that his paper had given sufficient coverage to all political parties contesting local government polls in the northern region.

Asked whether he had carried Maheswaran’s statement as he believed in her claim of 200,000 deaths on the Vanni front, Vithyatharan emphasized that her assertion certainly deserved front-page coverage.

Maheswaran made that statement as the key Jaffna-based UNPer spearheading local government polls campaign and was responsible for that assessment, Vithyatharan said.