Raising concern over certain electoral irregularities and the post election violence and intimidation against the opposition supporters , the leaders of the ethnic minority groups , namely Tamils and Muslims called on the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to fulfill his promise of ‘maximum possible devolution to the provinces without compromising the national sovereignty’, given the context of the war.<br/><br/>Addressing a joint press conference in Colombo today, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader , R. Sampanthan and the leader of the Sri Lankan Muslim congress (SLMC) , Rauff Hakeem said that on a model akin to India or Canada, Sri Lanka should develop its own model and ‘people in their own locality should be allowed to take charge of their own socio political destiny’.<br/><br/>Both the ethnic groups were of the view that this is the time for ‘introspection and retrospection’ by the Government to re assess the situation in the North and the East.<br/><br/>They also said that the government should look into the underlying reasons as to why the majority in the war ravaged North and the East voted against the incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa. They also blamed the government for further polarization of the ethnic groups in the country by their apathetic attitude.<br/><br/>Both the parties said that the people in the just concluded election have given them a ‘renewed mandate’ to be their legitimate representative and urged re elected President Rajapaksa to move towards political reconciliation and start the process of devolution of power to the provinces in an undivided Sri Lanka.<br/><br/>The leaders of the TNA and SLMC said that they want to consolidate their electoral gains and work ‘closely’ with each other during the forthcoming Parliamentary elections. While TNA wants to go to polls on its own strength, SLMC may be the part of the united opposition , if they later decide to contest the Parliamentary elections together. He said that the discussions are still in the preliminary stage.<br/><br/>Both had supported the common opposition candidate retired General Sarath Fonseka in the recently concluded Presidential election but TNA was not part of the opposition alliance.