French and British voters rejected outright the pro-LTTE Tamil candidates who contested last weekend elections to the EU Parliament.

In France the Tamil group backed by the front organizations of the LTTE was routed in the election. This independent group that contested for the Ile de France district with a large Tamil voter base from Sri Lanka, Mauritius, East Africa and India cast their votes in favour of socialist and left parties and rejected the Tamil group backed by the LTTE front organizations.

According to political analyses a prominent Tamil candidate Jean Marie Julia from Pondicherry could not even get the votes of the French citizens of Pondicherry origin because he was part of a list including 18 expatriate Sri Lankan Tamils backed by the LTTE.

French voters elected 78 MEPs to the EU Parliament including 14 each from the Green Party and the Socialists.

In the UK the frontline Tamil candidate Jaani Jananayagam, also backed by Pro-LTTE groups, could not come even among the first ten of the 8-member London electorate. While the Conservatives (3 seats) and Labour (2) seats topped the list with 479,037 votes and 372,590 votes respectively, Jananayagam, who contested as an independent could get only 50,014 votes, far below the last elected member of UKEP who polled 188,440.

Political observers in France and UK are of the view that these results indicate that the expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil Community in France and Britain do not have the political clout they claim to have and is so believed by many British, French and other European Politicians who expect to benefit from a block vote expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil Community.