President criticises TNA’s CM Choice

Friday, 13 September 2013 03:15 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Says Wigneswaran is a Colombo Resident, a native of Jaffna would have better idea of ground situation

The Tamil National Alliance should have picked a Northern native member to be its Chief Ministerial Candidate at the 21 September provincial election, President Mahinda Rajapaksa told Tamil media representatives yesterday.

President Rajapaksa said the retired Supreme Court Judge C.V. Wigneswaran who is leading the TNA’s Northern Polls campaign was a resident of Colombo. “The better choice would have been Suresh Premachandran or Mavai Senathirajah who are from the North,” the President told Tamil media personnel at Temple Trees. Wigneswaran did not even have a vote in Jaffna, he said. The President said that a Chief Minister native to the Northern Province would have a better idea of the ground situation in the region, unlike a resident of Colombo. Criticising the TNA’s election manifesto the President said that he did not believe that policy statement would help to resolve the three decade ethnic conflict in the country. (DB)