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Sri Lanka's Opposition Parties Form Coalition Ahead Of Upcoming Elections 98 days ago
(RTTNews) - Sri Lanka's opposition parties on Tuesday formed a coalition to fight the country's upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, which are expected to be held within the next few months.
The new alliance includes the United National Party led by former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and nine other smaller Muslim and Tamil parties. The leaders of the involved parties signed an agreement to form an alliance called the United National Front at the Parliament Complex in the capital city of Colombo on Tuesday.
The political leaders who signed the coalition agreement on Tuesday included Ranil Wickremasinghe of the United National Party, Mangala Samaraweera of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party Mahajana Wing, Rauff Hakeem of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and Mano Ganeshan of the Democratic People's Front.
Following the signing of the coalition agreement, Ranil Wickremesinghe said that the main aim of the opposition alliance is to scrap the country's executive presidential system and restore parliamentary democracy, with prime minister as the head of state. Currently the prime minister's role is largely ceremonial.
The formation of the opposition front is seen as a challenge to President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government, which is riding on a strong public support after its defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels earlier this year.
In an effort to cash in on its popularity among the island's Sinhalese majority over the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels, President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government has said that it would hold early elections.
Though the term of the current parliament ends in April next year, the next presidential elections are due only by November 2011. However, the government has said that both elections would be held simultaneously before April 2010.
In May, the Sri Lankan military had claimed victory in its 25-year civil war against the Tamil Tiger rebels after recapturing the rebel-held areas and eliminating major rebel leaders, including Tamil Tiger founder and leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, in an year-long final offensive.
Official figures indicate that the final military offensive against the Tamil Tiger rebels in the northeastern regions of the country left over 300,000 people homeless, while some 7,000 civilians were killed in the final months of the civil war.
An estimated 80,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the country's civil war after the Tamil Tiger rebels launched an armed rebellion in 1983, demanding an independent state for the Tamil minority in the island nation's northern and eastern regions.
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