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| Voters in Batticaloa turned up at a polling station to cast their votes in the last Presidential elections last year. Pix: Northeastern Monitor/ Theva Athiran |
By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
Colombo, April 19 -The upcoming local government elections in Sri Lanka will see fierce campaigns by Tamil political parties in the Northern and Eastern Provinces where Tamils are the predominant community.
For the first time in Si Lankan history, the Tamil parties will be up against a Sinhala-led national party, the National Peoples Power (NPP), that had emerged as a force in the North and East in the last Presidential and parliamentary elections.
If a comment made by the leader of the Tamil National People Front (TNPF ) and parliamentarian Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam during an interview with the Colombo correspondent of The Hindu, Meera Srinivasan recently is anything to go by, the Tamil parties seem to be fighting a political battle to avoid an ‘ electoral disaster.’
The unprecedented achievement of the NPP which bagged more seats in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in the November 2024 parliamentary elections than the Tamil parties, has raised questions about the future of Tamil nationalist politics in Sri Lanka.
The support extended by the Tamils to the NPP led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which had a history of adopting a negative stance on finding a political solution to the Tamil problem, unsettled the Tamil polity.
There is no doubt that after almost 16 years since the end of the civil war, the Tamils had turned to the NPP merely because of their disgust with the Tamil parties which had failed to adopt a practical and sensible approach to finding solutions to their problems as the situation demanded.
But it seems that the Tamil parties see the victory of the NPP at the parliamentary elections in the Tamil region as an aberration. There are Tamil politicians who argue that the election results cannot be construed as the Tamils’ rejection of Tamil nationalism, because the combined vote share of the Tamil parties and independent groups is much higher than that of the NPP in the North.
It is intriguing that Tamil political leaders still think that the Tamils wanted to teach them a lesson merely because their parties did not work together.
Even Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, who usually hated forming alliances with other Tamil parties, had stitched a new alliance for the local elections, albeit with smaller groups. The Ilankai Thamizharasu Katchi (ITAK ) is contesting alone. However, due to the current electoral system, it avoids campaigning against other Tamil parties vigorously as their cooperation is necessary to form an administration in the local councils after the hustings.
The ITAK, TNPF and the Democratic Tamil National Alliance (DTNA) are the major Tamil political formations contesting the local polls in the North and East. One the one hand, all of them are carrying a virulent campaign against the ruling NPP and on the other, views expressed by them on the manner in which the Tamil people should vote expose a fierce inter-party rivalry.
Leaders of every Tamil party are asking the Tamils to vote only for them and appealing to the people to use the local elections as a crucial opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to the Tamil nationalist cause.
Appealing to the Tamils to adopt a new approach in the New Year, ITAK’s acting general secretary and former parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran argues that it is wrong to say that people have given a mandate to the ruling NPP at the parliamentary elections in the Tamil areas, especially in Jaffna, which is considered to be the political and cultural nationalist haven of the Sri Lankan Tamils.
Addressing a press conference in Jaffna last week, Sumanthiran said that the NPP got only 25 per cent of the votes in Jaffna district and that it got less votes when one looks at the votes of all the other parties. He called on the Tamils to give the Tamil parties a clear mandate.
“Our people did not give a mandate to the NPP or any other the Southern Lankan party. The Tamils should vote for the Tamil parties only at coming the local elections. Our appeal should not be construed to mean that people can vote for any particular Tamil party. If the votes are divided among several Tamil parties, the result will be the same as in the parliamentary elections.”
“The Tamils can prove that their mandate is for a Tamil party only by voting for the main Tamil party, the ITAK which has been, for decades, incessantly championing a political solution to the national ethnic question on the basis of a federal set up. The Tamil people should vote to defeat the false propaganda of the ruling party about the mandate of the Tamil people, ” he added.
Like Sumanthiran, the leaders of other Tamil political parties are also appealing to the Tamils to vote only for their alliances. In making such an appeal, they can be seen to be claiming exclusivity — that they alone have an unwavering commitment to the defence of Tamil nationalism.
Although the NPP is the “common enemy ” of these parties in the local elections, we are witnessing an unfortunate and ridiculous situation where party political machinations and personality clashes are a big stumbling block to their ability to work together on the basis of at least a minimum common political programme.
Tamil parties are on an overdrive to prevail upon the Tamils that there is no difference between the NPP and the other main old southern Sinhala-led political parties when it comes to addressing the problems of the minorities, particularly the Tamils .
At the same time, it is a fact that the approach and actions of the NPP government in the last six months have not been able to sustain the confidence and support of the people in the North and East.
The local elections will show whether the Tamils heed the call of the Tamil parties or their disgust at the attitude and actions of these parties and their dissatisfaction with the NPP government.
There is also a question as to how much interest the Tamils in the North and East will take in the local elections. The Tamil parties are being forced to say that the local elections are crucial for ensuring the very existence of Tamil nationalism. They are putting their future as Tamil nationalists at stake in the local elections. (The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo) Courtesy- South Asian Affairs
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