“Mahinda’s Sinhala regime will swallow Eastern Province in 10 years” – Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 March 2010, 17:53 GMT]
“Mahinda Rajapakse’’s Sinhala regime plans to take over the Eastern Province under its complete control by wiping out Tamil representation but Tamil National Alliance will certainly defeat this insidious plan,” R. Sampanthan, leader of TNA, said addressing the first TNA election campaign meeting in Jaffna district held Wednesday at Aavarangkaal, sources in Jaffna said. “In the context of Tamil representation being reduced in Eastern Province TNA can only get maximum representation in the North and therefore all the voters in Jaffna district should help to achieve this by casting their votes to TNA,” Sampanthan appealed.



There were only around 500 to 600 people who attended the meeting in which nearly all the TNA candidates contesting Jaffna electorate were present except C. V. K. Sivagnanam and M. Mudiappu Remedias.

Their absence was conspicuous as allegation is raised by people in the peninsula that TNA candidates are canvassing individually competing to win a seat for them, the sources said.

Criticism is also leveled against TNA for carrying out election campaign not as a single united body but as seperate groups in Jaffna district.

Sampanthan, Suresh Premachandran, Mavai Senathirajah, Sritharan, Saravanabavan, Sivachandran, Arunthavapalan and Aiyngaralingam were some of the TNA candidates who were present at the meeting.

“The government has paid money and imported persons from South and even abroad to contest as independent candidates in Jaffna district just to split the votes, and many circles here are lending their cooperation to this scheme” Sampanthan said in the meeting.