A call to boycott Lanka presidential poll in the Tamil regions, fears of vote split

Colombo: A hardline Tamil nationalist party has launched a campaign to boycott the September 21 presidential election, saying that no major candidate has pledged for the federal set-up for political autonomy for Tamils in the North and East of the country, local election monitoring groups said on Tuesday.

Moreover, Selvaraja Kajendran, the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) general secretary, has lodged a complaint against the police for obstructing their leaflets distribution campaign on Saturday in the eastern region of Thirukkovil.

The TNPF has also urged action by the Elections Commission and the Human Rights Commission against the police for obstructing them.

Kajendran said they have called for a boycott of the election as no major candidate has so far pledged to set up a federal set-up for Tamil regions in the north and east to cater to the Tamil demand for political autonomy.

“We will stop this boycott campaign if anyone offers a federal solution to Tamils,” the monitoring group quoted Kajendran as saying.

Meanwhile, the Tamil votes in the next month’s election have been sent into turmoil with different Tamil groups pulling in different directions.

The main Tamil party Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is yet to make its position official on supporting which of the front runners from the majority Sinhalese community.

A section of TNA has also expressed support for a common Tamil candidate fielded against the party’s wishes.

The votes of 2.2 million registered voters from the Tamil regions would be crucial for any front-runner to gain the 50 per cent plus one vote required to be declared the winner.

The incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, the main opposition challenger Sajith Premadasa and the Marxist JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake are the front runners.

A vote boycott engineered by the armed separatist group LTTE in 2005 in the Tamil regions saw Wickremesinghe's narrow defeat.