Rajapaksa must keep promise of devolution: Karunanidhi

CHENNAI: The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam will not remain a mute spectator if there is failure or delay in implementation of assurances by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, given at the time of the recent presidential election, on devolution of powers to Sri Lankan Tamils, DMK president and Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi said on Saturday.

“The DMK government will not hesitate to pressure the Union government for appropriate action,” Mr. Karunanidhi said in a statement. It would behove a fair and just democracy to fulfil electoral promises once the polls were over.

On the Rajapaksa government’s arrest of former Army chief and defeated Opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka, Mr. Karunanidhi said, “We know that in the history of Sri Lanka, then and now, who all were betrayed and killed.”

Rulers of Sri Lanka would not have forgotten the way Alexander the Great treated the defeated King Porus.

Referring to All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Jayalalithaa’s description of his stand that the Election Commission should abide by the dictates of the ruling party as “anti-democratic,” the Chief Minister said she had issued a statement as if the people of the State had forgotten the instances of ‘gherao’ of the then Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan and attack on a private hotel where he had stayed (in 1994).