JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A governing-party lawmaker has publicly criticized a cabinet minister from his own coalition over the collapse of a district coordinating committee meeting in Kilinochchi, a rare public break in the National People’s Power that has drawn attention to tensions inside the governing alliance in the north.
Rajeevan Jeyachandramoorthy, an N.P.P. member of Parliament from the Jaffna District, said it was wrong to remove the independent lawmaker Ramanathan Archchuna from Thursday’s meeting, and that neither a minister nor anyone else present had the authority to stop an elected representative from raising questions on behalf of the public.
“People will raise certain questions through a member of Parliament, and he has a responsibility to ask those questions on their behalf,” Mr. Jeyachandramoorthy said. “He must be allowed to ask them. Preventing that is not democracy.”
The comments were a public rebuke of Ramalingam Chandrasekar, the fisheries minister who heads the N.P.P.'s operations in the north and chaired the meeting.
Mr. Jeyachandramoorthy faulted Mr. Chandrasekar’s conduct of the meeting as well, saying a chairman had a responsibility to maintain order and to keep proceedings moving amid political disagreement.
“A chairman must have the ability to control and conduct a meeting,” he said. “If that control is absent, there is no leadership.”
His criticism cut in two directions. Mr. Archchuna should have been allowed to raise questions as an elected representative, he said, but the chairman should also have kept the proceedings from descending into disorder. Suspending the meeting before its agenda was complete, he added, was wrong regardless of who had walked out.
The intervention was notable in a coalition that has largely maintained public discipline since sweeping to power in 2024, and it placed two of the N.P.P.'s Tamil politicians on opposing sides of an increasingly contentious debate over how the government is managing political and administrative affairs in the north.
A Meeting Descends Into Disorder
Thursday’s meeting at the Kilinochchi District Secretariat began at 9 a.m. under Mr. Chandrasekar’s chairmanship and ended roughly two hours later, without completing its agenda.
Mr. Archchuna arrived about 15 minutes late and was soon in a heated exchange with Sivagnanam Shritharan, another member of Parliament. According to people who attended, Mr. Archchuna used derogatory language during the confrontation.
Mr. Shritharan objected to what he described as the chairman’s failure to restore order, and walked out.
Tensions escalated when Mr. Archchuna alleged irregularities in a coconut cultivation distribution program in the Thiruvaiyaru area.
An assistant commissioner of the Department of Agrarian Services disputed his account, telling the meeting that no money had been released and no fertilizer subsidy provided under the program.
Mr. Archchuna rejected the explanation and accused the Kilinochchi District Government Agent of corruption. According to people present, he also made remarks that the official interpreted as threatening.
The Government Agent denied the allegations and challenged Mr. Archchuna to produce evidence. The district’s four divisional secretaries, joined by other government officials and members of the District Secretariat staff, walked out in protest.
The confrontation continued after they left.
Mr. Archchuna argued with Mr. Chandrasekar and with civil society representatives, and at one point the exchange appeared close to turning physical, prompting members of the minister’s staff to intervene. Police later escorted him from the premises.
By then, much of the district’s senior administrative leadership had gone, and the meeting ended at about 11 a.m.
In a Facebook post later that day, Mr. Chandrasekar called the suspension of the meeting regrettable and blamed the irresponsible and uncivilized behavior of unnamed individuals. He did not mention Mr. Archchuna by name.
Meetings convened to address livelihoods, infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, education, and health, the minister wrote, should not become platforms for personal political disputes.
“We will never abandon Kilinochchi,” he added, promising greater government attention to the district.
A Rare Public Disagreement
Mr. Jeyachandramoorthy, a former school principal who was once associated with the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi and a staunch supporter of one of its leading figures, M.A. Sumanthiran, entered Parliament on the back of the N.P.P.’s breakthrough in Tamil-majority areas in the 2024 election.
Mr. Chandrasekar, by contrast, is a longtime member of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the party that forms the organizational and ideological core of the broader N.P.P. coalition.
Several political and civil society figures in the Northern Province said Mr. Jeyachandramoorthy’s intervention reflected a broader challenge facing the N.P.P.: how to reconcile politicians recruited from Tamil civil society and professional backgrounds with a party structure still heavily shaped by the J.V.P.
Questions Over the Chairman’s Role
Thursday’s breakdown has also revived criticism of Mr. Chandrasekar’s handling of earlier confrontations involving Mr. Archchuna at district coordinating committee meetings.
Civil society representatives and officials in the north have accused the minister of failing to intervene decisively when meetings turned disorderly, particularly in Jaffna, where Mr. Archchuna has repeatedly clashed with politicians and officials. The confrontations, critics say, have consumed meetings intended to address some of the region’s most pressing problems, among them land disputes, infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, and public services.
A video that circulated on social media after one such meeting appeared to show Mr. Chandrasekar pinching Mr. Archchuna at the waist, a gesture some critics portrayed as evidence of an overly familiar relationship between the two men.
The disorder has also raised concerns among local journalists about access to the coordinating committee meetings. Reporters said they feared that journalists and photographers could be excluded from future meetings in Kilinochchi, following restrictions imposed on media access to meetings in Jaffna. Shutting out the press, some journalists and political observers argued, would address the visibility of the disorder rather than its underlying cause.
The repeated confrontations have also raised a more troubling question: whether the chaos, deliberately or otherwise, is helping the government avoid scrutiny of difficult issues in the north.
