By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
Even though a month has passed since the Local Government (LG) Elections, political parties have been unable to form administrations in the majority of local councils. The ruling National People’s Power (NPP) and the Opposition parties, particularly the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) led by 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.
Changing stances
The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK ), which came first in the majority of the councils in the predominantly Tamil areas of the north and east, is also facing problems in the formation of local councils, just as the NPP is in southern Sri Lanka.
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 councils in the Tamil areas, have now taken a different stance to suit political expediency.
Fearing that the unprecedented victory of the NPP at the Parliamentary Elections would pose a great danger to their political future, the Tamil politicians asked the Tamil people to vote only for Tamil parties at the local elections to ensure the existence of Tamil nationalism and to prove that their people had not lost the spirit of nationalism. They insisted that Tamils should not vote for any national (Sinhalese) party from the south.
Verdict on the NPP
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 Tamil people, especially in the north, have completely rejected the NPP, as some Tamil politicians erroneously claim. The results of the local elections are clear evidence of this. In the Jaffna District, considered a bastion of Tamil nationalist politics, the ruling party won 81 seats, whereas the ITAK won 135 seats. The Tamil People’s Council (TPC ) led by the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) came in third with 79 seats.
Nor can it be said that the Tamil people have once again come to fully trust the Tamil parties, which have failed to take forward their struggle for legitimate rights in a prudent and pragmatic manner, as required by the domestic and international situation, for the last 16 years since the end of the civil war.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s Government could have won more support in the north and east at the local polls than it did at the Parliamentary Elections if it had, during the last six months after coming to power, shown a sincere interest in dealing with the problems of the Tamil people in a way that would win their trust.
Protecting party interests
It has already been pointed out in this column that in an interview to The Hindu Colombo correspondent Meera Srinivasan after the Parliamentary Elections, TNPF Leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam admitted that the Tamil people had wanted to teach a lesson to the Tamil political parties.
However, looking at political developments in the north and east after the local elections, it does not seem that the Tamil political class has learnt any tangible 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 Tamil people who expected the Tamil parties to cooperate with each other in the formation of the council administrations. There are those who hope that the possibility of cooperation in local administrations will eventually lead to broad-based unity among Tamil parties in the course of time.
However, the ongoing negotiations among the Tamil parties in the north, the process of forming new alliances, and policy declarations have exposed the Tamil politicians’ keenness in protecting their party political interests rather than those of the Tamil people. 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 political existence.
A new Tamil alliance
Be that as it may, northern Tamil nationalist politics today has taken the direction of splitting the polity into two camps. One is the ITAK and its allies. The other is the TNPF, which has morphed into a new avatar as the TPC, and the forces supporting it.
The ITAK, which had been the dominant constituent party of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) for more than two decades under the leadership of the late veteran leader 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 TNPF, which took the form of the TPC by merging with some groups before the LG Elections, has signed a 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 those of the ITAK, also on the possibility of cooperation in LG bodies.
However, they switched to Ponnambalam’s TNPF after the ITAK refused to accept a request from DTNA leaders Dharmalingam Sithadthan 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 Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) Leader Douglas Devananda regarding the formation of local bodies.
ITAK’s internal disputes
Meanwhile, the ITAK has been plagued by internal disputes since its leadership election early last year, in which former parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran was defeated by Member of Parliament (MP) Sivagnanam Shritharan.
Sumanthiran, however, currently the ITAK’s Acting General Secretary, controls the party with the support of the Central Executive Committee. Despite being the leader of the parliamentary group, Shritharan often behaves like the party’s organiser of the Kilinochchi District.
Not only the Shritharan 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 Shritharan.
It is up to the members of the ITAK to find an amicable solution to the internal party dispute. But while those who dislike Sumanthiran kept saying that there was no future for the party as long as it was under his control, the party’s big win at 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 party’s Acting Leader, along with others who support him.
The results were a major disappointment to leaders of other Tamil parties who had expected the ITAK to suffer a major setback at 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 political developments in the north today.
A shadow war
Although the ITAK, TNPF, and DTNA – the 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 at least in a local administration?
Meanwhile, if Sumanthiran, who met with the leaders of the DTNA after the LG Elections, had not expressed his desire to run as his party’s Northern Province chief ministerial candidate at the Provincial Council Elections expected to be held any time next year, new alliance formations and courting strange bedfellows in the north might not have seen the light of day.
There is no doubt that the anti-Sumanthiran hysteria that has prevailed in northern politics for many years is an impediment to unity among the Tamil polity. At the heart of these developments is a shadow war for the future political leadership of Sri Lankan Tamils.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the culture of calling certain politicians ‘traitors’ seems to have come to an end in view of ongoing negotiations among the Tamil parties to form local council administrations in the north.
Courtesy:Sunday Morning