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Last Updated : 2024-04-18 07:50:00
LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
Amirthalingam was at one time very popular among Tamil youths and perceived as a hardliner in Tamil politics.The TULF under the joint leadership of Appapillai Amirthalingam and Murugesu Sivasithamparam had won 18 seats in 1977 contesting on a separatist platform. With the UNP getting 141 seats and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) being reduced to eight, the TULF became the chief opposition party in a parliament of 168 MP’s. Amirthalingam became the first Sri Lankan Tamil to hold office as Opposition Leader. The anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983 and the sixth Constitutional Amendment disavowing separatism resulted in the TULF boycotting parliament and forfeiting their seats. Amirthalingam along with several other TULF leaders went into self-exile in India.The armed struggle waged by many Tamil militant groups gathered momentum.The Indo-Lanka accord brought about a ceasefire that did not last long. While the TULF and all the other militant groups accepted the accord and gave up the goal of “Tamil Eelam” the LTTE continued to fight. The chief military adversary of the LTTE was now the Indian army and not the Sri Lankan army. Meanwhile elections under very unsatisfactory conditions were held to the temporarily merged Northern and Eastern Provincial Council in 1988. The TULF declined to contest and so India installed Annamalai Varatharapperumal of the Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) as the first (and only) Chief Minister of the North-Eastern Province.When parliament polls were held in 1989 the TULF was also forced to contest by India. India brought militant organisations like the EPRLF, TELO and ENDLF to contest along with the moderate TULF under the aegis of the TULF and its ‘Sun’ symbol. Amirthalingam and his wife Mangaiyarkkarasi who was herself a political figure in her own right returned to Colombo from Chennai. The first of the TULF ex-MPs to return from self–exile in India was the former Jaffna MP Vettivelu Yogeswaran.The popular Yogeswaran living with his wife Sarojini (She too was killed later by the LTTE after becoming Jaffna Mayor) returned to Jaffna alone several months before the Indo-Lanka accord was signed. He obtained clearance from the LTTE hierarchy in Chennai before doing so.Add comment
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