COLOMBO, Nov 20, Reuter: Moslems tied with Tamils in elections for a regional council in Sri Lanka designed to let Tamils run their own affairs, poll officials said on Sunday.
However, previously chosen seats mean Tamils will have a majority on the council being established to try to end a Tamil separatist revolt in the north and east of the country.
Elections department Deputy Commissioner W.D. Perera said the Moslems Congress and the Tamil Eelam people’s revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) each got 17 of 35 seats allotted in eastern province in Saturday’s election.
The United National Party (UNP), the party of President Junivs Jayewardene which is dominated by Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese, won only one seat.
A 71-seat council with semiautonomous powers to administer the North and East was the last hurdle in implementing an Indian Sri Lankan pact aimed at ending strife between Tamils and Sinhalese. 4
The EPRL, a guerrilla group fighting for a separate Tamil state before it supported the pact signed in July 1987, and another Tamil Party were last month elected uncontested to 36 seats in Northern province.
Moslem Congress leader M.H. Ashraff said the seats won by. Moslems in Saturday’s poll would not deter Tamils from running their own affairs because they hold a majority.
”I would say the results were a thrashing of the UNP and mean the UNP members of parliament for east province no longer have any mandate,” he said.
The views of the Moslems, who constitute 33 per cent of Eastern province, will be crucial when a referendum on the merger of the two provinces is held next year.
Tamils comprise 43 percent of the population and Sinhalese 24 percent.
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