The proposed amendments to 13-A were floated and given wide publicity in the run up to the Northern Provincial Council Election, with a view to duping the people into believing that it would not yield to pressure, both local and international, Karunanayake said.
The MP said the powers that be, had now realised that any attempt to meddle with 13-A would cost them their two thirds majority in the legislature, with the minority and left parties and some Sinhala Ministers also flexing their muscles.
The government having assured the masses that 13-A Plus would never be granted to the North and East, had toned down its rhetoric after the recent visit of Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon to Colombo, MP Karunanayake observed, pointing out that it was now talking in terms of amending the Constitution after the Northern PC Polls.
Provincial elections, especially in the North, had been scheduled for September, to impress the Commonwealth Heads of Government before their November meeting in Colombo. Meanwhile, it had generated the 13-A debate to divert attention from more pressing issuing such as the deteriorating economic and law and order situations, Karunanayake noted.
UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said that President Mahinda Rajapaksa, by excluding the SLMC, the National Union of Workers Party (NUWP) and the left parties in the ruling UPFA coalition from the Parliamentary Select Committee on the National Question, had unwittingly admitted that he no longer possessed a two thirds majority.
Even after grabbing the SLMC and NUWP, whose members were returned on the UNP ticket, the Rajapaksa regime was struggling to dilute 13-A, he observed.
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