{"id":135515,"date":"2014-12-24T12:50:10","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T07:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=135515"},"modified":"2015-01-04T22:35:51","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T17:05:51","slug":"tamils-should-freely-exercise-their-franchise-at-the-upcoming-presidential-election-gtf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/tamils-should-freely-exercise-their-franchise-at-the-upcoming-presidential-election-gtf\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamils Should Freely Exercise Their Franchise At The Upcoming Presidential Election: GTF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Global+Tamil+Forum&amp;x=13&amp;y=3\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Global Tamil Forum<\/span><\/a> (GTF) strongly urges the Tamil people in Sri Lanka to use every vote carefully during the January 8 Presidential Election.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_52187\" style=\"width: 208px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Suren-Surendiran-colombotelegraph.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-52187\" class=\"size-full wp-image-52187\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Suren-Surendiran-colombotelegraph.jpg\" alt=\"Suren Surendiran -Spokesperson GTF\" width=\"198\" height=\"275\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-52187\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Suren Surendiran -Spokesperson GTF<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Issuing a statement today GTF says; &#8220;Tamil people have a long history of voting based on principled considerations. The upcoming Presidential election is no different.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;GTF is fully aware that in the post-independent Sri Lanka, Tamil people have continuously lost their rights under a flawed majoritarian electoral system. Their desire to have a degree of control in the Tamil majority areas was never granted, despite repeated democratic expressions of their wishes through all available electoral means.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nevertheless, from our perspective, whether Sri Lanka should continue in the same path or whether change should be taken at this juncture to stop and reverse this trajectory is the fundamental question facing the electorate.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thus, GTF urges\u00a0every Tamil speaking person, up and down the country, to fully participate in this decision and to vote in this Presidential election.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":52187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1,6969,2375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-news","category-popular-stories","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - 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