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| An election rally held in Point Pedro during last Parliamentary polls. |
By Veeagathy Thanabalasingham
Considering the fact that there had been a significant 10% reduction in voter turnout at the 2024 Parliamentary Elections in comparison with the Presidential Election that was held on 21 September 2024, it seems that the number of people turning up at the polling booths at the 6 May Local Government (LG) Elections is likely to be even less.
The people are dissatisfied with the National People’s Power (NPP) Government, which they brought to power with great expectations. People who were expecting immediate relief from economic hardships are disappointed. The LG Elections will certainly show whether the Government’s popular support has begun to wane or not.
But there is no reason why the people should turn to the Opposition. All Opposition parties have lost support among the people and are in a state of disarray. With major Opposition parties presently entangled in internal power struggles, it is unlikely that they can give a fight to the ruling NPP. Therefore, in the case of southern Sri Lanka, most people are likely to vote in the same manner as they did at the Parliamentary Elections.
Tamil parties’ struggles
In the last Parliamentary Elections, Tamils supported the NPP in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in an unprecedented way. The NPP won more seats than the Tamil nationalist political parties, which had traditionally enjoyed overwhelming popular support in both provinces. The question is whether the Tamil people will vote similarly at the LG Elections.
Fisheries, Aquatic and Ocean Resources Minister Ramalingam Chandrasekar, who is in charge of the NPP in the north, expressed confidence that they would capture all the local bodies. But it is to be hoped that the LG Elections will help us understand the impact of the NPP Government’s approach and actions in relation to the problems of the Tamil people over the last six months.
At the same time, the northern Tamil nationalist parties do not seem to have learnt a proper lesson from the results of the last Parliamentary Elections. The Tamil nationalist parties still believe that they were not supported by the people in the north simply because they contested separately.
Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) Leader and Member of Parliament (MP) Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, in a recent interview to The Hindu’s Colombo correspondent Meera Srinivasan, said that the Tamil people had wanted to teach a lesson to the Tamil parties.
“The Tamil people wanted to teach a lesson to the traditional Tamil nationalist parties, including ours. Our vote share has halved. The next election will be a disaster if we fail to act wisely in the face of the looming danger. Tamil nationalist parties need to work together in Parliament,” he said.
Ponnambalam, one of the senior leaders from the north, has come forward for the first time to unite with some of the Tamil parties in Parliament. He has come forward for the first time to unite with some Tamil parties even outside Parliament.
Known for his dogmatic approach, he had been reluctant to form alliances with other Tamil parties citing his “unblemished” Tamil nationalism as a reason. However, the smaller Tamil parties contesting the LG Elections with his TNPF had reached out to him after their attempts to form alliances with other Tamil parties failed.
Attempts by other Tamil parties, such as the Democratic Tamil National Alliance (DTNA), to expand their alliances have also failed. Some of the Tamil parties that are willing to join alliances may have only a small number of members. Therefore, it will not be difficult for anyone to understand the size of their vote share. These parties are grappling to find a space and voice for themselves in the current political landscape.
ITAK’s challenges
The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) is contesting alone in all LG bodies. The party has taken a position that it can join with other Tamil parties in forming administrations in local councils once election results are out. The ITAK is outlining its position by stating that the LG Election system does not allow any one party to capture a majority of seats.
The ITAK is currently under the control of its Acting General Secretary, former MP M.A. Sumanthiran. It is therefore no secret that the other Tamil parties in the north will try their best to defeat the ITAK rather than the NPP.
The main challenge for the ITAK is to overcome serious infighting. At these elections, as at the Parliamentary Elections, a large number of independent groups are contesting at the insistence of certain forces within the Tamil diaspora and vested interests at home with the aim of creating political chaos.
NPP’s disinterest
At the Parliamentary Elections, the NPP came first in eight of the 11 constituencies in the Jaffna District, except Chavakachcheri, Kayts, and Kilinochchi. According to the old (first-past-the-post) electoral system, eight of the MPs from the Jaffna District would have belonged to the ruling party today.
Of particular note is the warning by some political observers of a potential setback if the people in the north vote at the LG Elections in the manner in which they did at the Parliamentary Elections.
The NPP, especially the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), is not interested in finding a political solution to the national ethnic problem through devolution of power.
Government leaders, including President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, have repeatedly said that the Provincial Council system will remain in place until a new constitution is promulgated. However, they refrain from talking about the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which has been in existence for nearly four decades as the only framework for devolution in the country.
History shows that the NPP and JVP have been against the concept of devolution from inception, even as they state that they will never allow racism and religious extremism to re-emerge and that their long-standing policy is to treat all communities in Sri Lanka as equals.
The Government does not understand that in order to prevent racism from resurfacing, it is necessary to find solutions to the problems that the same racism has created.
Therefore, if the NPP led by such leaders were to take over most of the LG bodies in the north, there is the possibility of a major setback to the concept underlying the decades-long struggle of the Tamil people to find a solution to the national ethnic question through devolution of power.
The leaders of the NPP have been hell-bent on portraying the support given by the Tamil people at the Parliamentary Elections as an endorsement of their policies, thereby strengthening their long-standing position against devolution of power.
A well-meaning warning
The Government and its leaders are not interested in finding a political solution that meets the legitimate political aspirations of the Tamil people or in striving to win the confidence of the people of southern Sri Lanka to create conducive conditions for a political solution.
In such a situation, the northern Tamils should not vote at the LG Elections in a manner that could undermine the political legitimacy of their decades-long struggle entailing unimaginable sacrifice. If the NPP captures most of the local bodies in the north, there is a danger that it could be construed as the Tamil people’s acceptance of its stance against devolution.
In fact, the Tamils will be de-legitimising their struggle for devolution of power if they vote for the NPP at the LG Elections.
These comments should not be construed as a campaign in favour of the Tamil political parties, which failed to guide the Tamil people properly in the period after the end of the war.
The well-meaning warning against the potential danger to the political legitimacy of the struggles of the Tamil people and the concept of devolution of power should not be confused with the opportunistic interests of most of the Tamil parties, which are yet to change their old ways of politicking that has been detrimental to the welfare of the Tamil people. (The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo) Courtesy- The Sunday Morning
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