• Selvarajah Kajendren cites section of Tamil polity’s demands including int’l mechanism to probe ‘war crimes’ & federal Constitution 

Ahila Ilankai Thamil Congress (AITC) Jaffna District Opposition Parliamentarian, Selvarajah Kajendren said that his call to boycott the upcoming Presidential Election by abstaining from voting for any candidate has received a positive response from the public.

Speaking to The Daily Morning, he said that they called on the people not to vote for any of the Presidential candidates, be they Sinhalese or Tamils, and claimed that the majority of the people are agreeing with their demand. "The political parties that have fielded a Tamil candidate have been in favour of investigating war crimes through a domestic mechanism. But, the Tamil people`s demand was to establish an international mechanism to do it. These parties are also supporting the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in a unitary state, whereas the Tamil people's demand has been for a federal state." He also claimed that such political parties and their politicians should be responsible for the country's decline as much as the Rajapaksas (a reference to the administrations of former Presidents Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Mahinda Rajapaksa) are responsible for the same. Emphasising that their only demand is to repeal the unitary Constitution and introduce a federal Constitution, he said that they have been conveying it to Presidential candidates Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sajith Premadasa, and Anura Kumara Dissanayake for the past two years through the Parliament. "They don’t seem to be ready to agree to our demand. That is why we requested the people not to vote for anyone," Kajendren further said, noting that the Presidential candidates now don’t have sufficient time to agree to their demand, and that therefore, there would not be any change to their (AITC) call from the Tamil community. "If any of the candidates agree to implement our demand, it should be included in their manifesto, but now, there is no time to do it."

Commenting on the incident where the Police reportedly obstructed his campaign asking the people to boycott the Presidential Election, he said that they informed the Election Commission of the matter, and that the Police had then allowed them to carry out the campaign. "We propagate our demand through various methods such as pocket meetings, and visits to town areas and villages where the Tamil people live. Most of the people are agreeing with our view."

There has been a longstanding allegation that the Sinhalese community based Heads of State have not taken adequate steps to address the issues faced by the Tamil community. The frequent issues faced by them include the absence of a mechanism to properly look into alleged war crimes and international law violations during the civil conflict, the lack of infrastructure facilities, the occupation of their lands by the military forces and State Departments, and the non-implementation of the 13th Amendment in full.