President Ranil Wickremesinghe has stated that Presidential Candidate and NPP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayaka had made a racist statement during a campaign rally in Jaffna and that Dissanayaka owes an apology to the people of Jaffna.
He made this statement yesterday (07) during a rally in Uduppiti, Jaffna.
“My friend Anura Kumara made a troubling statement, implying that the people of Jaffna could be seen as opposing change if they do not align with the South,” Wickremesinghe said.
“This is a clear threat, a tactic often employed by the JVP, and I guarantee that the people of the North will be fully protected by the law.” The president further noted.
Meanwhile, TNA MP M.A. Sumanthiran, defended Anura Kumara Dissanayake over the said controversial statement, adding that he never thinks that Dissanayake uttered those words with a view to expressing any racist feelings.
“Anura Kumara Dissanayake made a statement in Jaffna stating that people in the South are expecting a change and the change will come with his election. But, the southern people might say that people in the north had not become participants of that change. When he used these words and said this, immediately, many people remembered what Gotabaya Rajapaksa had said at his swearing in ceremony in Anuradhapura after he was elected President,” the TNA MP mentioned.
‘I want everybody to be participants in my victory. But, the northern people did not join me in this victory. People in the north had a sense which was proved right because it was the people who elected him who chased him away,” Sumanthiran said.
