Former Northern Province Chief Minister C.V Wigneswaran, leader of the Tamil Mattal Kuttali Party, announced yesterday that a common Tamil candidate would be fielded for the upcoming presidential election.
Until yesterday, Wigneswaran, the former chief minister of North Province and retired Supreme Court judge was saying that he should support President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s agenda. However, calling for a press conference yesterday he told reporters that they are preparing to nominate a common Tamil candidate.
“We will appoint a common Tamil candidate. We will vote for him and not for anyone else,” Wigneswaran said.
He said that all the Tamil parties are coming together for that and about seven parties came together and called a meeting in Vavuniya last week.
“Accordingly, we have appointed committees. We will nominate who is our candidate from those committees and ask the Tamil people to vote for that candidate.”
“However, we are not going to win. We are using this opportunity to force people to agree on all the things that have happened to us so far and ask the world what is our decision,” Wigneswaran explained.
When asked by the media whether this work would not prevent a candidate from getting 50 percent, Wigneswaran said that it could happen.
“I said that we can give the second or third preference to anyone. Our leaders will not like that. We will give our first vote to our candidate anyway,” he emphasized.
