Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils decide to field candidate for Presidential election

Colombo, July 22 – Sri Lanka’s Tamil political parties have decided to field a common candidate to represent minority Tamils at the upcoming Presidential election slated to be held in September.

It will be after more than four decades that a Tamil could feature as a candidate in Presidential polls.

Late Kumar Ponnambalam, a leader of All Ceylon Tamil Congress, was the last Tamil Presidential candidate who contested in the 1982 Presidential race. He was assassinated in Colombo in 2020.

The group of Tamil political parties, including Tamil People’s Alliance led by former Northern chief Minister C. V. Vigneswaran, Selvam Adaikkalanathan’s Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), D. Siddharthan’s People’s Liberation Organisation Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), Srikantha’s Tamil National Party and Suresh Premachandran’s Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), together with the leaders of a civil society groups including Tamil People’s Congress Association (TPCA) have now come to a consensus to nominate a common candidate to represent the minority Tamils in the island nation.

However, Illankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) – the main Tamil political party in the country with the largest number of MPs under the umbrella group of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) – has not joined the pact signed on Monday.

The date for the decisive presidential poll is to be announced in the coming week while unconfirmed reports indicate that the election might take place on September 21 with nominations to be accepted by mid-August.

Incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, together with his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa who fled the country amidst public protest, is completing his five-year term with the Election Commission now empowered to announce the nominations date for the next election.

The main Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa of Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), who broke away from Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP), and Marxist party Jathika Jana Balawegaya (National People’s Power) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake have announced candidacy.

Meanwhile, Wickremesinghe and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s party Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) are yet to announce whether they will be contesting the elections together or separately.