By Ravi Ladduwahetty

The Tamil National Alliance yesterday laughed off President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s announcement of having elections to the Northern Province in September 2013, claiming that they will never be held at all!!

The TNA’s comments came in the wake of  President Mahinda Rajapaksa telling the Hindu newspaper’s Colombo staff correspondent R. K. Radhakrishnan in an interview and published in that newspaper yesterday that he hoped to hold the elections to the Northern Provincial Council in September 2013 but the stumbling block to holding the polls prior to that was the non- availability of the polls register.

"What is the problem in the government having an election in the Northern Province at this stage now, when it had a Presidential election, a Parliamentary election and a Local government election in the North," TNA spokesman and Jaffna District MP Suresh Premachandran queried in an interview with The Island last night.

If the government and the President are both claiming that the elections to the Northern Province could not be held due to the electoral registers not being present, how is it that the government held the previous Presidential, Parliamentary and Local government polls and why did the government not say it at that time? Premachandran asked.

While emphasizing that the TNA was ready for a provincial poll even at this time, he predicted that the government would not hold an election in the north even after September 2013. "The government will not hold the Northern Provincial elections even after September 2013 as it is aware that the TNA will win and that is the last thing that the government wants at this stage," he said.

The TNA MP also said that the members of the Armed Forces had grabbed large extents of land in the Jaffna district and they would not be able to hold them in the event that the TNA established a Northern Provincial Council, he said.