In the dingy back office of a Sri Lankan grocery shop in Harrow, north-west London, sales assistants pore over a Tamil newspaper, while a customer says he is going home to follow events on the internet. Having watched from afar as the Sri Lankan army crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009, British Tamils are again transfixed by a campaign on the island-this time for an election. On January 26th the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, will seek to capitalise on his military victory at a presidential poll called nearly two years earlier than it need have been.
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