Tamil parties wait & watch as Sri Lanka goes to polls

Parties say this is the first election in which they are unsure of results

- PON VASANTH B A

AS Sri Lanka went to the polls on Wednesday to elect a new parliament, political parties representing Tamils, most of whom reside in the north, east and hill country regions of the country, are awaiting the outcome with bated breath as the island nation witnesses a multi-cornered contest on a scale never seen before. This is compounded by the difficulty in assessing the magnitude of a popular wave the newly-elected president Anura Kumar Dissanayake seems to be riding even in areas dominated by ethnic minorities.

Leaders of almost all Tamil political parties that TMS spoke to said this is the first election in which they have no idea what the results will be like. Even the public seems to be in a "state of confusion," as an elderly person in Jaffna put it.