Fifty percent of Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) will support the Tamil common presidential candidate, Gurusuwamy Surenthiran, Media Spokesman, Tamil National Common Structure and Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) said during a televised interview recently.
Surenthiran said that they understand their candidate, P. Ariyanethran, will not be the winning presidential candidate but this is a great opportunity to demonstrate the electoral power of the Tamil people. He said C.V. Vigneswaran’s Tamil People’s Alliance, Selvam Adaikkalanathan’s Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), D. Siddharthan’s People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), Suresh Premachandran’s Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), Democratic Crusaders party and former MP Srikantha’s Tamil National Party, supported the common candidate.
There were about 593,000 votes in the Jaffna District, about 306,000 votes in Vanni District, and about 900,000 votes in the Northern Province, he said. In the East there were about 1.3 million votes, he added.
“Altogether there are 2.2 million Tamil speaking voters,” he said.
Surenthiran said that while they intended to contest the 21 September presidential election, they were also open for supporting a main candidate who would agree to implement a political solution to the problems faced by the Tamils.
“In the coming weeks, we will show our strength and then negotiate. There are 2.2 million Tamil speaking voters in the North and East and everyone knows how important these votes are in a tight presidential election,” Surenthiran said.
“There are four main candidates in the coming presidential election, and this is the most competitive presidential elections in Sri Lankan history,” he said. Perhaps the winner would scrape through and all leading candidates needed the support of the Tamils in the North, he said.
He said that while Tamils had been demanding a common candidate, some sections of the ITAK, including MP M.A. Sumanthiran were opposed to the idea.
Sumanthiran has even declared that they would take disciplinary action against Ariyanethran, who is an ITAK member. Surenthiran said.
“We have not fielded a candidate to win the presidential election. We want to highlight the fact that the problems of the Tamils have not been addressed by successive governments. In the past, main candidates visited the north and east, acknowledged that the Tamils had a political problem, and promised to solve it but they reneged on their promises. We have voted for Sarath Fonseka, Maithripala Sirisena and Sajith Premadasa. The living standards of the north and east have not improved at all,” he said.
Fifteen years had elapsed since the conclusion of the war, but there was not a single factory in the north, he said. In 2022, the contribution of the Northern Province to the GDP had been 4.1 percent. The east contributed 5.2 percent that year, he said.