se ties with socialist nations (Political, 2002, 2). It is apparent why such a platform would be more popular with the poor and working class masses than those of the UPN party that appeals to a more capitalist elite segment.
In the decades to follow there would be many parties to follow in the footsteps of the UPN and SLFP. Within the SLFP other factions developed that gave rise to the Sri Lanka PeopleÆs Party (SLPP) and the PeopleÆs Democratic Party (PDP). In the past two decades Sri Lankan politics has also seen the birth of Marxist parties. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) was established in 1935, but had no members in Parliament by the late 1980s (Politics, 2002, 3). However, ever this group saw a faction split off on its own, the New Equal Society Party (NSSP).
We now come to one of the more complex parties within Sri Lankan politics. The Sri Lankan Tamils have had a history of supporting their own party candidates and issues in elections over the other parties. By 1977 the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) had emerged, a party that demanded full independence and separate statehood in the north and east and on the island of Tamil Eelam (Bandaranaike, 2002, 1). By the early 1980s political tensions escalated and all of the TULF legislators walked out of Parliament for refusing to swear to an oath that made them renounce separate statehood. The Tamils since that time for all intents and purposes, have been excluded from a significant role in the legal-political process.
The animosity that arose from this exclusion of the Tamils in the legal-political process paved the way for the rise of extremist political groups like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). While TULF would eventually work for an autonomous state within the framework of the Constitution, the LTTE militant faction resorted to terrorism as a means of negotiation. One cannot understand the full extent of the exclusion in Sri Lankan po...