(): A group of Tamil parties sans the main party, ITAK, on Monday signed an agreement to field a common candidate for the presidential election to be held later this year. Last week, the election commission said that the date for the much-awaited presidential election in the island nation will be announced by the end of this month. Earlier this month, the election commission has indicated that the election is likely to take place on a date between September 17 and October 16.

The leaders of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA), Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), and Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) along with leaders of a civil group, Tamil People’s Congress Association (TPCA) signed the agreement in Jaffna, sources said.

However, the main Tamil party Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), which heads the umbrella group Tamil National Alliance (TNA), was not a party to the agreement, they said. The Tamils from the north and east regions have aligned historically with the opposition candidate in presidential elections since 1982.

Among the group which signed the pact for a common Tamil candidate is the former northern chief minister CV Wigneswaran’s TPA.

Wigneswaran, a former Supreme Court judge, was publicly endorsing incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe until Monday’s signing of the agreement to field a common candidate. Wickremesinghe as the then-opposition challenger at both the 1999 and 2005 presidential elections had received TNA backing. In 2005, a Tamil vote boycott led by the LTTE saw Wickremesinghe narrowly lose to the then-candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa.