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| A pocket election campaign meeting of ITAK ahead of the last Parliamentary elections. Pix: Northeastern Monitor |
By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
Even though a month has passed since the local government elections were held, political parties are unable to form administrations in the majority of the local councils. The ruling National People’s Power ( NPP) and the opposition parties, particularly the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) led by the Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, are busy trying to attract members of other parties and independent groups to their side.
Government leaders have rejected the opposition’s accusation that the NPP, like previous governments, is engaged in ‘horse-trading’. As a political analyst put it last week, one wonders whether the NPP government is changing the system or vice versa.
The Ilankai Thamizharasu Katchi (ITAK ) which came first in the majority of the councils in the predominantly Tamil areas in the north and east, is also facing problems in the formation of local councils. This is mainly due to the fact that many Tamil political leaders, who had promised the people before the elections that their parties would cooperate in the formation of administrations in the councils in the Tamil areas only by Tamil parties , have now taken a different stance to suit political expediency.
Fearing that the unprecedented victory of the NPP in the parliamentary elections would pose a great danger to their political future, Tamil politicians asked the Tamils to vote only for the Tamil parties in the local elections to ensure the existence of Tamil nationalism. They insisted that Tamils should not vote for any national ( Sinhala ) party from the South.
The indifferent attitude of the NPP government towards the problems of the minority communities, especially the Tamils, was the main reason for the Tamils to take the call of the Tamil parties seriously to a larger extent. It cannot be said that the Tamils especially in the north, have completely rejected the NPP, as some Tamil politicians erroneously claim. The results of the local elections are a clear evidence of this. In Jaffna district, considered a bastion of Tamil nationalist politics, NPP won the 81 whereas the ITAK won 135 seats.The Tamil People Council (TPC ) led by Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) came a third with 79 seats.
It cannot be said that the Tamils have once again come to fully trust the Tamil parties, which have failed to take forward their struggle for the legitimate rights in a prudent and pragmatic manner as required by the domestic and international situation.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s government could have won more support in the North and East in the local polls than they did in the parliamentary elections if they had shown a sincere interest in dealing with the problems of the Tamils in a way that would win their trust, during the last six month after coming to power.
It has already been pointed out in this column that in an interview to Meera Srinivasan, Colombo correspondent of The Hindu after the parliamentary elections, TNPF leader Gajendra Kumar Ponnambalam admitted that the Tamils wanted to teach a lesson to the Tamil political parties.
But looking at the political developments in the north and east after the local elections, it does not seem that the Tamil political class has learnt any lesson from the setback it suffered at the parliamentary elections. After winning the local polls, they went back to their old ways. It was a big disappointment for the Tamils who expected the Tamil parties to cooperate with each other in the formation of the councils . There are those who hope that the possibility of cooperation in the local administrations will eventually lead to the broad-based unity among Tamil parties in course of time.
However, the ongoing negotiations among the Tamil parties in the North, have exposed the Tamil politicians’ keenness in protecting their party political interests rather than that of the Tamils. Strangely, there is unity among the Tamil parties only in having a common stand against the NPP which they see as a threat to their l existence.
Be that as it may, Northern Tamil nationalist politics today is split into two camps. One is the ITAK and its allies. The other is the TPNF, which has morphed into new avatar as the Tamil National Council, and the forces supporting it.
The ITAK, which had been the dominant constituent party in the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) for more than two decades under the leadership of the late R. Sampanthan, is currently not interested in forming alliances. But the (TNPF), which had so far categorically refused to form any alliance with other parties, citing lack of doctrinal integrity among them as a reason, has now formed an alliance.
The Tamil National People’s Front, which took the form of the Tamil People Council by merging some groups before the local government elections, has signed Memorandum of Understanding with the Democratic Tamil National Alliance ( DTNA ) after the elections. The new alliance has not yet been named.
Although the alleged basic objective of the new alliance is to cooperate to form smooth local administrations in the Tamil areas, the two sides signed an agreement regarding a policy declaration last week pledging to work together for the “liberation of the Tamil people” in the future.
Prior to the agreement, the leaders of the DTNA had held talks with the leaders of the ITAK also on the possibility of cooperation in local government bodies.
However, they switched to Ponnambalam’s the TNPF after the ITAK refused to accept a request from DTNA leaders, Dharmalingam Sitharthan, and Suresh Premachandran to support the formation of their own administrations in some of the local councils where they had a significant number of seats.
At the same time, the ITAK is holding talks with former minister and Ealam People Democratic Party (EPDP) leader Douglas Devananda regarding formation of local bodies.
Meanwhile , the ITAK has been plagued by an internal dispute since the leadership election early last year, in which former parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran was defeated by Sivagnanam Sreedharan MP. But, Sumanthiran, currently the acting general secretary, controls the party with the support of the central executive committee. Despite being the leader of the parliamentary group, Sreedharan often behaves like the party’s organizer of the Kilinochchi district.
Not only the Sreedharan faction within the party, but also the leaders of other Tamil parties do not want the ITAK to function under Sumanthiran’s guidance. There is no doubt that they would very much like the ITAK to come under the leadership of Sreedharan.
It is up to the members of the ITAK to find an amicable solution to the internal party dispute. But while those who disliked Sumanthiran were saying that there was no future for the party as long as it was under his control, the party’s big win in the local elections has come as a big shock to his detractors. Sumanthiran was at the forefront of the local polls campaign along with C.V.K. Sivagnanam, the acting leader.
The results were a major disappointment to leaders of other Tamil parties who had expected the ITAK to suffer a major setback in the local elections under Sumanthiran’s stewardship. They also hoped that if the ITAK suffered a major defeat, it would be easy to weaken Sumanthiran’s position within the Party and isolate him from politics gradually. But that didn’t happen.
It is against this background that one must look at the political developments in the North today.
Though the ITAK, the TNPF and the DTNA, three main political formations in the North and East, contested the elections separately, they were united in carrying out fierce campaigns against the NPP. Why can’t they come to an amicable arrangement after the elections to avoid problems in the formation of local bodies? What could be the reason for this other than party politics and personality clashes? How can we expect a unified approach to find a political solution to the national question from those who cannot cooperate, even to form a local administration?
If Sumanthiran, who met with the leaders of the DTNA after the local elections, had not expressed his desire to run as his party’s Northern Province chief ministerial candidate in the provincial council elections, expected to be held any time next year, new alliance formations courting strange bed fellows might not have been seen the light of the day. There is no doubt that the anti-Sumanthiran hysteria that exists in northern politics is an impediment to the unity of the Tamil polity.
However, there is a silver lining in the dark cloud. The culture of calling one’s opponents ” traitors ” seems to have come to an end in view of the ongoing negotiations to govern local bodies. (The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo ) Courtesy- South Asian Affairs
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