(COLOMBO) – A Sri Lankan Tamil grouping on Monday launched a public campaign calling for a boycott of the forthcoming elections in the island-nation that must be held on or before October this year.
The Tamil National People’s Alliance (TNPA) is seeking to establish a federal State in the pre-dominantly Tamil provinces of the north and east and an end to the present unitary status of the country.
TNPA activists took to the streets in the northern town of Jaffna where they distributed leaflets to the public towards this end.
The TNPA says it would be futile to exercise their franchise since all candidates contesting the forthcoming elections were committed to protecting the unitary status of the State.
The TNPA was reacting to a statement by Tamil National Alliance (TNA) politician M.A. Sumanthiran who said it was regretful of the boycott in the northern electorate at the 2005 presidential election which led to the defeat of the current President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Wickremesinghe was defeated by a wafer thin margin in the 2005 election that was won by Mahinda Rajapakse owing to the northern boycott that was called by Velupillai Prabhakaran, the slain leader of the now defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elaam (LTTE).
The LTTE carried out a 30-year-old protracted war against the Government with the aim of carving out a separate State in the North and East of the country.
The LTTE leadership including Prabhakaran was decapitated by Government forces in early 2009 which saw the total defeat of the separatist gro
