COLOMBO, NOV 16: As the controversy over President Chandrika Kumaratunga's gaffe on the origins of Sri Lankas minority Tamil community hotted up, a government-controlled newspaper on Monday rushed in to the rescue with complicated explanations about the offending statement.Kumaratunga told South African television recently that Tamils were not the "original" people of Sri Lanka. ``They are wanting a separate state, a minority community which is not the original people of the country,'' she said in the interview.Some Tamil political parties have taken exception to the remark while the opposition United National Party is threatening to go to town with it as a campaign issue.Describing it as a ``canard spread by anti-government elements'', the Daily News said today it should have been clear to all that what the President meant was the ``LTTE Tamils who were fighting the war in Sri Lanka were not original settlers who were trying to oust alien invaders, like in the case of the apartheid whites inSouth Africa''.Quoting ``Tamil sources'', the newspaper said Kumaratunga had done more for the minority community that any other leader in Sri Lanka's post-independence history. ``They (Tamil sources) observed that what the President said and meant was a far cry from the twisted interpretation being given by (those) who are attempting to denigrate the President and all that is just by the minorities which she is fighting for tooth and nail,'' the newspaper commented.The newspaper campaign in defence of Kumaratunga follows comparisons in the local media between her remark and that by former president D B Wijetunge of the UNP that the ``minorities are like creepers clinging to the Sinhala tree.''While in the opposition, Kumaratunga derived maximum capital out of that remark which was one of several factors that swung the Tamil vote her way.Only too aware of the political damage that such statements can cause, Kumaratunga is also planning to launch a leaflet campaign detailing the various publicpro-Tamil statements made by her since she came to power, including one after the South Africa faux pas that Sinhalese nationalist historians had contributed to the ethnic crisis by twisting facts.Meanwhile, a Sinhalese nationalist organisation called the National Joint Commission praised Kumaratunga's controversial remark. ``We fully endorse the presidents statement because every part of it is based on incontrovertible facts. That the Tamils are a minority community and that they are not the original people of Sri Lanka are facts based on historical evidence,'' said NJC secretary Piyasena Dissanayake.
