2nd Lead (Adds details)

Tamil wins Oslo municipal elections

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 September 2003, 11:04 GMT]
Yogaraja Balasingham (Baskaran) contesting on the Labor party ticket became the first Tamil ever to win a seat in the municipal council elections for Oslo, Norway, sources in Norway said.

He came eleventh in the labour party list where 15 members are selected.

The opposition labor party did not win the elections, but Oslo based political observers say that there is a still a chance that the Labor may be able to form a coalition with other parties.

Yogarajah Balasingam

Although Baskaran is the 11th candidate in the party list, he got the third largest personal votes in labor party obtaining 2470 votes. He came eighth in Oslo among candidates from all parties in the personal vote count.

As a prominent member of Oslo's Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC), Baskaran, for the past several years, has been involved in community work among the expatriate Tamil community in Oslo, sources said.

According to the Norwegian Statistikk Sentralbyrå (SSB) statistics from March 2003, there are 2716 Norwegian citizens with Sri Lankan background in Oslo. There are also around 1000 Sri Lankan citizens who are eligible for voting in Oslo County Council Elections in 2003 according to the sources in SSB.

Elections for the 59 seats of Oslo Municipal Council are held once every four years.

External Links:

Aftenposten:		Election 'turning point' for Labor
Norway Post:		Political uncertainty in Oslo and Bergen
Aftenposten:		Oslo should consider new elections
Statistics Norway:		Norwegian citizens with immigrant background entitled to vote in Oslo