SL's main Tamil party decides to support opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena

Sri Lanka’s main ethnic Tamil political party said Tuesday that it will support opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena in January’s presidential election in the latest blow to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s bid for a third term in office. Tamil National Alliance leader Rajavarothayam Sampanthan said his party will back Sirisena, who defected from the Rajapaksa government last month, because it believes Rajapaksa failed to heal the island’s long-standing ethnic conflict despite ending 25 years of civil war in 2009. [caption id=“attachment_2022845” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AP[/caption] “We are inclined to the view based particularly on the performance of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the past, that we would rather repose our faith in the joint opposition candidate Mr. Maithripala Sirisena, rather than expect what has not happened in the past 10 years to happen hereafter,” Sampanthan said. Rajapaksa led a military campaign to defeat the Tamil Tiger rebels, ending a long campaign for an independent state by Sri Lanka’s ethnic minority Tamils. However, he is accused of reneging on promises to share power with the Tamil-majority north and multiethnic east, and falling behind on rehabilitation efforts for war-affected Tamils. Besides the defection of Sirisena, Sri Lanka’s largest Muslim political party announced on Sunday that it was also leaving Rajapaksa’s camp to support the opposition candidate in the election. More than 20 lawmakers and ministers have defected to the opposition. The Tamil party said it was concerned with what it said was the country’s “inexorable move toward dictatorship” under the Rajapaksa administration, with the country’s executive presidential system becoming the repository of all powers. “The removal of the two-term limitation on the office of the president was clearly intended to perpetuate this dictatorship and authoritarianism,” the TNA said in a statement. Rajapaksa was first elected to office in 2005 and won a re-election in 2010 for six years riding his popularity of defeating Tamil Tiger rebels. He used a two-thirds majority for his party in Parliament to abolish the term limit for the presidency and took over powers to appoint judges, top bureaucrats, police and military chiefs. Associated Press