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Sri Lanka The People's United Front
The People's United Front (Mahajana Eksath Peramuna--MEP) was
a small party founded by veteran leftist Dinesh P. R. Gunawardene
that since the early 1950s has attracted Sinhalese support with
appeals to militant Buddhist and Sinhala chauvinist sentiments.
In 1956 it formed a coalition on the left with the SLFP and
Marxist parties, but in a shift to the right four years later
joined forces with the UNP. During the late 1970s and the early
1980s, it maintained a formal association with the JVP,
originally a Maoist group that was responsible for a bloody
uprising in 1971 but operated as a legal political party between
1977 and 1983.
Data as of October 1988
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