Sajith Premadasa, leader of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya party, gestures at an election campaign rally for the upcoming presidential election, scheduled for September 21, in Colombo, Sri Lanka August 22, 2024.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Colombo: Sri Lanka's main Tamil party Tamil National Alliance (TNA) on Sunday said that they will back the main opposition challenger Sajith Premadasa in the September 21 presidential election.
MA Sumanthiran the spokesman for the TNA told reporters that the decision was made on Sunday at the central committee meeting of Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), the main party of the TNA.
The decision has come as no surprise as Sumanthiran since 2022 had worked closely with the opposition, the analysts said.
The TNA had been split in its decision to support which group given its long association with the incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe, the current President of Sri Lanka, when he led the main opposition since 1994.
The TNA had always backed the opposition challenger at each presidential election in 1999, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2019.
In the previous presidential election of November 2019, the TNA backed Premadasa, the then-main challenger.
However, in this election, a section of the party had fielded a Tamil candidate, one of the 38 candidates in the fray. However, TNA had resolved to take disciplinary action against him for breaching party discipline.
The ITAK Chair S Sritharan last week publicly backed its breakaway candidate.
At today’s meeting, it was decided to request the common Tamil candidate and TNA member P Ariyanethran to withdraw from the race.
The votes of 2.2 million registered voters from the Tamil regions would be crucial for any front-runner to gain the 50 per cent plus one vote required to be declared the winner.
The incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, the main opposition challenger Sajith Premadasa and the Marxist JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake are the front runners.