NE NEWS SERVICE
COLOMBO, JUNE 19
Sri Lanka’s main Tamil party Tamil National Alliance (TNA) will take up issues of the minority Tamils in the North and East provinces separately while formulating its manifesto for the parliamentary election to be held on August 5, a party official said on Friday.
At a party meeting held on June 13 in Jaffna, the TNA decided that its manifesto must enable it win a maximum number of seats from the two regions to the country’s 225-member Parliament.
The election will take place on August 5. It has been decided to treat the two provinces separately to address the issues specific to both regions in order to offer solutions, the official said.
There are 29 seats from northern and eastern provinces, including Tamil-dominated and Muslim-dominated areas in the two regions.
All three communities – Sinhala, Tamil and Muslims – have an almost equal share in the eastern provincial demography.
The TNA had 16 seats in the previous Parliament. The party members stressed on the need to do effective campaigning in view of the challenges posed by several rival fringe Tamil parties in both provinces, the party official said.
The party envisages a constitutional solution to address Tamil aspirations.
The TNA’s support to Maithripala Sirisena was based on the former president’s pledge to introduce a new Constitution in Sri Lanka which will address political problems of the Tamils.
The party has come under heavy criticism from the nationalist Tamil forces who accuse it of having achieved nothing in exchange for their support to Sirisena.
The TNA has pledged its support to the current President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on the condition to introduce a new Constitution which will address the Tamil concerns.
Earlier, the TNA had said that it would talk to President Rajapaksa about the 13th amendment to the Constitution as a means of sharing land and police powers with the minority Tamils in the country.
The 13th amendment, an outcome of an agreement reached between India and Sri Lanka in 1987, deals with devolution of land and police powers to the provinces in Sri Lanka.
The Sinhalaese community comprises 74 per cent of the country”s population and is known to oppose the 13th amendment.
