JVP shows massive increase

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 December 2001, 14:10 GMT]
The final results of the elections to Sri Lanka's 12th Parliament showed an upswing in popularity not only for the United National Party but also most remarkably in favour of the radical Marxist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). The JVP's popularity has shot up by 296579 votes in the course of a year, mostly at the expense of the People's Alliance. Both the JVP and the PA appealed largely to Sinhala Buddhists during the elections, by persistently attempting to stoke nationalist sentiments among them.

The JVP's strength in the Parliament has climbed from one to 16 MPs in merely seven years. In October last year it polled 5.99 percent of the total valid votes polled. This has climbed to 9.10 now. The JVP has achieved this by shrewdly exploiting the PA's political crises.

The JVP polled 518,774 votes countrywide in last year's elections. It has got 815353 this time.

The Tamil National Alliance polled 3.89 percent of the total valid votes polled in Sri Lanka at the elections to its 12th Parliament. It got 348,164 votes in the electoral districts of Jaffna, Vanni, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Ampara and Colombo. The TNA got 12,696 votes in the Colombo electoral district.

The Sri Lanka Muslim congress scored 105,346 votes island wide. It is 1.18 percent of the total votes polled in the country. The SLMC too was allocated one national seat.