TNA unable to register alliance

by P. Krishnaswamy

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is faced with problems in registering the four-party alliance as a political party with the Elections Commissioner (EC).

The TNA is an alliance of four Tamil political parties with the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) as the main party and the Tamil Eelam Liberation Front (TELO), the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) being the others. The TULF led by Mavai Senadhiraja, MP for Jaffna, is only a faction of the original TULF now led by veteran Tamil leader V. Anandasangaree and founded by the Tamil leader S.J.V.Chelvanayagam.

The TNA contested the April 2010 general election under the Ilankai Tamil Arasi Kadchy (ITAK), the Tamil version of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) as registered with the EC, and won 14 seats, all from the North and the East.

Anandasangaree has written to the EC raising strong objections to the TNA being registered as a political party on the grounds that it does not have the legitimacy, its constituents were supporters of the LTTE and were instrumental to the assassinations of TULF leader A. Amirthalingam, R. Yogeswaran and many other Tamil leaders.

But sources of constituent parties told the Sunday Observer that they have decided to work together as a four-party alliance on a MoU which has already been drafted and will come up for discussion at their next meeting.

The meeting originally scheduled for last Thursday and Friday was postponed due to the indisposition of Mavai Senadhirajah, the sources said. Refuting speculation that there is a rift within the alliance, the sources said that they decided to work together under an MoU because elections to the Pudukudiyiruppu and Karachchi Pradeshiya Sabhas (PSs) in the Mullaitivu district are pending, the EC does not register new political parties while any elections are pending and it might take long for elections to the two PSs to be held.