The Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), the largest constituent party of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), has written to the speaker of Sri Lanka’s parliament and argued the party is entitled to the post of opposition leader as the largest party not in the current government.
In the letter to speaker Chamal Rajapaksa, ITAK General Secretary K Thurairajasingham and leader R Sampanthan, said as the two largest parties, the UNP and the UPFA, are in controlling the government together, no MP from those parties can be appointed to the post.
“The Government today is composed of both the UPFA and the UNP, disentitling both of those parties from occupying the seat of the Leader of the Opposition. No member of parliament elected from the UPFA or UNP can be the Leader of the Opposition,
“This clearly is the legal position as well as one that accords with parliamentary tradition, both of our country and the Commonwealth. The resultant position is that it is the ITAK that is entitled to the post of the Leader of the Opposition, having 14 members of parliament,” the letter said.
On Thursday, TNA spokesperson and MP Suresh Premachandran, criticised Sinhala parties in the South for allowing racism to be the basis on which nominations for Sri Lanka's opposition leader position were put forward.
Earlier this week Mr Sampanthan said the TNA was the true opposition in the island, as both the United National Party (UNP) and the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) had jointly formed the new government meant that with 13 MPs, the TNA was the opposition party with the greatest number of members.
No place for racism in nominating Sri Lankan opposition leader says TNA spokesperson (09 April 2015)
TNA is largest party outside of ruling government says R Sampanthan (06 April 2015)