I’ll win, says president

Press, 19 October 1982, Page 9

I’ll win, says president

NZPA-Reuter Colombo The Sri Lankan President. Mr Junius Jayawardene has wound up his election campaign, expressing confidence that he would be re-elected for a second term in tomorrow’s Presidential poll. Mr Jayawardene, aged 76, called the election 16 months before the expiry of his sixyear term to seek a fresh mandate for his economic

and political policies. Mr Jayawardene is being opposed by five opposition candidates, but his main rival is Hector Kobbekaduwa, of the former governing Freedom Party, who has predicted a victory for himself. The other candidates in the election are from three Marxist parties and from a small minority Tamil party. The main party of the

minority community, the Tamil United Liberation Front, has not fielded a candidate and has asked the Tamils to boycott the poll. The front is campaigning for a separate State for the Tamils, who account for oneeighth of Sri Lanka’s 15 million inhabitants, saying that they have been discriminated against by successive governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority.