JVP rejects President’s call to forgive Wimal

JFrom Sunday Leader

VP Leader Somawansa Amarasinghe has turned down a request by President Mahinda Rajapakse to permit the party’s dissident Propaganda Secretary Wimal Weerawansa back into the party fold without answering the charge sheet served on him.

Amarasinghe who declined to accept Rajapakse’s intervention in the internal rift in the party has asked the President not to intervene in matters concerning the JVP as the party could solve its own issues.

The President had made the request from Amarasinghe when the former had made a telephone call to the latter to discuss the possible resolution of the present crisis in the JVP through his intervention.

During the conversation Amarasinghe had told Rajapakse that the JVP was fully geared to address the present crisis and added that the party was well aware that it was the President and his brother who was behind Weerawansa’s defection.

Rajapakse had denied any involvement in the Weerawansa defection and had claimed they were stories circulated by the UNP. Amarasinghe however had responded by saying that he knew exactly what happened and that the JVP could not be fooled by such stories.

Since the defection of Weerawansa and his supporting parliamentarians from the party, the JVP has charged that it was the government that was instrumental in creating a split in the party and hampering its election campaign in the east.

JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva has said that it was evident that the government was instrumental in creating a rift within the JVP.

He made this statement in an interview with a private TV station recently.

Silva also added that one example of the government’s involvement in the whole issue was the security provided by the Presidential Security Division (PSD) to the JVP defectors.