“PAFFREL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KINGGSLEY RODRIGO IS OPENLY PRO UNP AND DIRECTOR JEHAN PERERA IS A TIGER SUPPORTER”
By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles
April 02, 07.15 PM:Sri Lanka’s PAFFREL organization, whose members have been allowed to monitor elections today, officially sanctioned by the Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayaka, as independent election monitors is headed by extremely bias individuals like pro-UNP Executive Directoe Kigsley Rodrigo and alleged LTTE supporter Jehan Perera , political parties and other commentators have complained.
Jehan Perera , who writes a regular column for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam controlled website ,Eelannation, that promotes separatism openly, has attacked PAFFRE:’s critics through his column published in the Tiger website.
The current Eelamnation column written by Jehan Perera complained,” The UNP has complained to the Election Commissioner that these (JVP-SLFP) politicians meet the state media editors regularly and direct them in their affairs. The commissars have removed one of the very few independent-minded editors in the state media, Lakshman Gunasekera, a journalist of rare civic virtue, which has been noted by international media watchdogs with great concern.”
Brazen enough to be bias , despite his election monitor leader status Jehan Perera was referring to the Sunday Observer editor who published an article insulting the Buddha’s tooth relic enshrined in Kandy and was removed over that reason. recently following protests of many Buddhist monks.
Former PAFFREL employees have alleged that Rodrigo had instructed them to work in their election monitoring work so that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s party could win, stealthily supporting them.
The Eeelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) had openly alleged that PAFFREL was openly bias and not fit to be engaged as election monitoring work in Jaffna due to its known Tiger links.
Boasting about his organizations role in today’s election Jehan Perera in the Eelamnation column said, that the Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayaka had granted them an important role . “He has accredited them, and given them authorization to enter into polling stations to monitor the elections. This is new for Sri Lanka, although it not new in other parts of the world where election monitors are granted the right to monitor the polling inside the polling stations. In Sri Lanka, however, election monitors have functioned for the past 15 years without official accreditation from the Election Commissioner, but with his tacit approval,” he wrote.
Jehan Perera as a leader of a pro-LTTE National Peace Council has been working very closely with a well-known Tiger activist, Ajith Rupasinghe, brother of International Alert’s Kumar Rupasinghe.
Dr. Susantha Gunatilleke said , “The Media Director of the National Peace Council, Jehan Perera, has also taken very “peaceful” positions. At the time of the Indian incursion we noted how he threatened Sri Lanka with dire consequences through the Indian forces on the Island saying that it was time for Sri Lankans to know some hard truths about their weakness vis-à-vis the large neighbor who was then wielding a big stick. Jehan Perera had also questioned the need for sovereignty and had called for “shared sovereignty ” and two near-states (January 12, 1997, The Island; May 1998 Sunday Observer). “
Dr. Gunatilleke also said Jehan Perera’s National Peace Council, had “urged that negotiations between the government and LTTE should be conducted with parity of status and without preconditions on either side. The central point was that the separatist view of history was accepted and Tigers given equality of status with the state.”
