Jaffna District MP Ramanathan Archchuna has praised former president and accused war criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa while launching a strong attack on the governing National People's Power, claiming the island had suffered since the NPP took office.
Archchuna was speaking at the "Mehewaraka Pranamaya" event in Kalutara, organised by the Sinhala nationalist MP Rohitha Abeygunawardena to honour Mahinda Rajapaksa, who as president oversaw the final months of the armed conflict in 2009, during which tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed by the Sri Lankan military at Mullivaikkal.
Archchuna said he highly valued the former president's contribution to the country, and added that he did not consider anyone in Sri Lanka worthy of the title of president except Mahinda Rajapaksa.
He said leadership should be entrusted only to those who genuinely cared for the country and all its communities, and that a president must be truthful to all nationalities. "I supported the current President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, but now the whole country, including myself, is suffering for electing him," he said, claiming that neither the Sinhala nor the Tamil people had seen meaningful development under the current administration, and that the government had misled both the public and foreign governments.
Archchuna went on to make a series of unsubstantiated claims about diaspora funding, alleging that the "LTTE diaspora" had financially supported the NPP's rise to power in anticipation of political change, but would no longer provide funding or electoral support because its expectations had not been met. He offered no evidence for the assertion, which echoes a longstanding trope in Sinhala nationalist politics in which Tamil diaspora financing is invoked to discredit political opponents.
He also predicted that the NPP would struggle in the forthcoming Provincial Council elections, and expressed confidence that Namal Rajapaksa, Mahinda Rajapaksa's son, would become president in 2029 and resolve the issues facing Sinhala and Tamil peoples.
The MP also said he feared legal consequences for his statements, claiming that multiple court cases had been filed against him for reasons he said he did not understand.
The remarks are the latest in a record of erratic and frequently contradictory interventions by the independent MP, who was elected from Jaffna in November 2024. Archchuna entered parliament having dedicated his victory to those martyred in the Tamil independence struggle, and marked his first day in the house with a tribute to the "leader and heroes", a reference widely understood to invoke LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. He has since told parliament that the label of terrorist is applied to Tamil leaders and withheld from Sinhala ones purely on ethnic grounds, and called for Jaffna to be handed over to Tamil Nadu.
Archchuna's conduct in office has also drawn repeated controversy. He was filmed brandishing a state-issued firearm during a land dispute in Jaffna in April, after which a nursing mother was remanded on his complaint, and he used a parliamentary speech to threaten the Tamil Nadu politician Seeman, saying he would have shot him.
A separate legal challenge before the Court of Appeal questions his eligibility to sit in parliament at all, on the grounds that he continues to hold the status of a public officer.