The Impotence of being Amirthalingam

By S. Sivanayagam
[ Saturday Review, Jaffna, Sept. 4, 1982]

(July 29, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There are two roads open to politicians – the high road and the low road. Many mediocrities in politics instinctively choose the latter. But men who have talent and ability and know they have it, develop a well-defined power impulse. After all, no man, unless he has a love of power can possibly shape the course of events in a country. TULF leader Mr Amirthalingam is one who is cast in the mould of a leader with a well developed power impulse. Even during the Satyagraha phase of the Federal Party under the benign leadership of the late Mr S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, Mr Amirthalingam was known to the Tamil masses as ‘Thalapathy’ (the peace time ‘General’).

When the Tamil politics entered into a new militant phase, the hour threw a leader. If Mr Chelvanayakam with his very sensitive face and his natural infirmities and sickness symbolized the passive, sorry state of the Tamil people, Mr Amirthalingam with his ‘chest forward’ stance and his aggressive and arrogant tones typified the new militant mood of an emerging Tamil nation. The present disillusionment with his leadership arose out of a simple reason. No leader in public life can afford to behave out of character, and that is precisely what Mr Amirthalingam has been doing over the past one year or more. It was Emerson who said: ‘Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.’ If Mr Amirthalingam has now earned the image of DOVE in the Tamil ranks, (surrounded by a whole bevy of parrots) it cannot be because he is less ‘vigorous’ or more ‘luxurious’. It was possibly the soporific efforts of a good dinner that has made him a ‘conservative’. And that dinner came in the form of the office of the Leader of the Opposition! It is characteristic of men like Mr Amirthalingam that they cannot be cowed down by aggression or a frontal assault. But to high office and honeyed words they have no answer in their personal armoury.

The phase of the amity talks has also ended now. But at what cost to the Tamil nation? All what the TULF has got out of the wild goose chase after Development Councils is a Mace and Throne for the Jaffna Chairman Mr Nadarajah. State-aided colonization which was one of the main planks on which Tamil grievance was built has been intensified more than ever while the TULF held their amity talks. What is worse it has become a military-aided colonization. According to the figures of the provisional census of 1981, the Sinhala and the Sri Lankan Tamil populations in the Trincomalee district, were 86,341 and 86,743 respectively. The difference was a mere 402! We are sure by now Trincomalee is well on the way to become a Sinhala-majority district. State-aided ethnic-based colonization has been the root cause of all communal conflict, and that policy is being pursued more ruthlessly than ever before.

Unless the TULF leadership has the courage to do a right-about turn at this eleventh hour, they will be the first losers even from the selfish point of view of the pursuit of power. It is foolish to talk of the importance of being Amirthalingam, at this juncture. What is distressing the vast mass of the people in the North and East is the impotence of Mr Amirthalingam as the Tamil leader right now.

-Sri Lanka Guardian