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Rajapaksa urges Tamils to elect the ‘known devil’

Sri Lanka’s beleaguered President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday appealed to the minority Tamils to back him, the “known devil”, in the January 8 presidential polls as he campaigned in the former LTTE bastion.

“There is a saying that the known devil is better than the unknown angel”, Rajapaksa said in Sinhala, speaking through a translator at a rally in Jaffna, the erstwhile stronghold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE).

69-year-old Rajapaksa has been battling a flurry of defections from his ruling coalition- the United People’s Freedom Alliance- with another parliamentarian switching loyalties to the opposition ranks today.

Achala Jagoda became the 26th legislator to join the opposition unity candidate Maithripala Sirisena in the endless stream of defections.

Rajapaksa’s Jaffna visit came amid the main Tamil party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), backed Sirisena for the presidential polls and the opposition yesterday alleged that the government had deployed soldiers to keep the Tamil voters away.

“This is my 11th visit to Jaffna as president,” Rajapaksa, who has been in power for nearly a decade,
told the rally.
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