THE nation’s Tamil-speaking minorities have launched a united front to demand a new constitution granting greater autonomy, reviving long-standing grievances two decades after the end of the island’s long ethnic war.
The alliance brings together six parties representing Tamil and Muslim communities, who make up more than a quarter of Sri Lanka’s 22 million people.
It comes as President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s leftist government faces renewed calls to deliver on promises to devolve power to Sri Lanka’s regions and address unresolved issues stemming from the decades-long conflict.
The war, which claimed over 100,000 lives, ended in May 2009 when government forces defeated Tamil Tiger rebels who had fought for an independent state in the island’s north and east.
Moderate Tamil parties have abandoned separatist demands and accepted regional autonomy instead, but successive Sinhalese-majority governments have failed to fully implement power-sharing measures promised since the conflict.
“We are asking the president to deliver on what is already in his election manifesto,” Tamil National Alliance spokesman MA Sumanthiran said on Monday.
The alliance also demands long-overdue provincial council elections, which have not been held for more than a decade.
The councils were established under a 1987 devolution plan intended to grant limited autonomy to Tamil-majority regions, but key provisions were never fully implemented.
Sumanthiran said Dissanayake’s government had pledged to hold the elections within a year of taking office in September 2024, but had yet to do so.
The parties are also seeking the return of privately owned land still occupied by security forces in former war zones.
“To make our country more inclusive, the government must deliver on its own promises,” opposition Tamil lawmaker Mano Ganesan said. — AFP
