9TH LEAD

TNA secures 16 of 29 SL parliamentary seats in North-East

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 August 2015, 05:50 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has secured 5 seats in the Jaffna electoral district, 4 seats in Vanni, 3 seats in Batticaloa, 1 in Trincomalee, 1 in Ampaa'rai and two seats for nominated parliamentarians according to the latest figures. In Jaffna, S. Sritharan, Mavai Senathirajah, M.A. Sumanthiran, T. Sitharthan and E. Saravanapavan have secured their seats after repeated counting of preferential votes on Tuesday while Suresh Premachandran lost his parliamentary seat. In the meantime, United National Party (UNP) led by Ranil Wickramasinghe is set to form the SL government in the South, despite a tough race with Mahinda Rajapaksa's UPFA. The UNP was leading the electoral districts in the South, particularly where Tamils and Muslims live in considerable numbers. UNP has got 106 seats in the SL parliament followed by the UPFA (95), TNA (16), JVP (06), EPPD (01) and SLMC (01).

UNP fails to get absolute majority in the 225-seat House.

A considerable percentage of voters in the Tamil districts have invalidated their votes. 25,496 out of 325,805 votes (7.83%) polled in the Jaffna electoral district and 17,155 out of 181,930 (9.43%) polled in Vanni have been rejected. This is significantly high, sending messages, as invalid votes in the southern electoral districts range around just 2-3%.

EPDP and UNP have secured one seat each in the Jaffna electoral district. The UNP and UPFA have secured one seat each in the Vanni electoral district. There was accelerated Sinhalicisation in parts of Vanni after 2009.

The UNP has got 2 seats, including a bonus seat, in Trincomalee electoral district, where the UPFA received one seat.

Despite the active engagement by the younger generation of the voters, the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) has only polled 15,022 votes, ranking behind the EPDP, UNP and the UPFA in the Jaffna electoral district, where the lead candidate, Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, was earlier expected to secure at least one seat.

However, Vice President and Senior leader of the ITAK, Professor S.K. Sitrampalam, who has been firm in opposing the policy deviations of the TNA hierarchy, has already been assured of the nominated seat, informed sources told TamilNet.

The parliament of genocidal Sri Lanka is 225-strong. The Eezham Tamils, whose homeland is nearly one-third of the island, have been put into the electoral game to find ‘political justice’ with around 15 seats. The outside ‘guarantors’ of the unitary State in the island have been playing this game with Eezham Tamils ever since universal enfranchisement was introduced to the island in 1931.

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