Is TNA born again-LTTE?

By Durand Appuhamy

(March 29, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Like many Sri Lankans, I am thoroughly disappointed with the current election Manifesto published by the TNA. This Manifesto, in my view seeks to perpetuate the irrational policies of the defeated LTTE. A thirty-year armed confrontation to win their demands, did only take the LTTE to decimation on the shores of Nandikadal lagoon and the Tamil people to abject destitution and IDP camps.This fact and the lessons ensuing from it appear to have escaped the framers of the TNA Manifesto. One can only hope that the long-suffering Tamil people, to whom their living conditions, livelihood, health, security and education are the most urgent needs, will have the courage to reject the demands in this infamous Manifesto, and vote for the candidates who proclaim the vision of reconciliation, hope for the future prosperity in conjunction with and in combination with all other citizens of this country.

In short the TNA Manifesto states the following: (1) Merger of the North and the East and the power sharing arrangement to this unit. (2) Devolved power over land, finances, law and order and socio-economic development. (3) Power to attract and employ foreign funds without interference from the Central Bank or the National Treasury. (4) A federal political solution with power for self-determination. And this should be acceptable to the Tamil speaking Muslims. The President in a recent interview with the Straits Times was forthright in rejecting all these demands. Therefore the TNA like the LTTE is on a collision course with the present government. Surely this is not what the country or the LTTE-victimized Tamil people want in the post LTTE era.

To me the items 2 and 3 are susceptible to negotiation as proper safeguards can be devised against abuse as well as discriminatory use of such powers. We already have the Indian government more or less directly helping the Eastern Province in socio-economic development, subject to the supervisory overview of the government. Similarly devolved powers over law and order too could be allowed to be exercised with constitutional and institutional controls. The police force in the autonomous Scotland could be an example to draw up suitable safeguards against the abuse of this power by the provincial authorities. Obviously these (land and finances) are matters for detailed negotiation by those knowledgeable in those subjects.

To me the sinister demands appear to be 1 and 4. They are the haunting echoes of the LTTE’s siren call for homeland and Eelam. Given the present context, the merger of North and east is really impracticable and unattainable. The mixture of races in the east will not accept the dominance of the Jaffna Tamil in that province. They have already had the bitter experiences of what that dominance entailed over the past thirty years. Would they like to go back to that kind of discriminative regime even if there are no guns now to enforce such an oppressive system? The Muslim and the Sinhala votes in the East in the coming General Election would, I expect, correct the aberration in the Presidential election and are likely to prove me right that they have no truck with the TNA. In fact it would not surprise me that many Batticaloa Tamils too now want reconciliation, prosperity and growth rather than confrontation and an ever deteriorating social and economic situation for themselves and turn away from TNA. I believe that their urgent needs are not what the 1 and 4 in the TNA manifesto seeks to obtain.

I regard with utmost suspicion TNA’s call for self-determination to the merged North and the East. Internal and external self-determination is simply a spurious distinction to deceive the people. The end-objective of both is the same. Long ago comrade V.I. Lenin (in his Right of Nations to Self-Determination) came to the "conclusion that self-determination of nations means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies and the formation of an independent national state". He further emphasized that "it would be wrong to interpret the right to self-determination as means anything but the right to existence as a separate state". Any other interpretation of self-determination by various "spin doctors" would be mere meaningless semantics and an attempt to deceive the people. Many provisions in the UN Charter do not admit the right to self-determination by minorities that will fragment/bifurcate an already existing member state of the UN. The UN Resolution 1514 (of 14thDec.1960) ended with a categorical provision; "any attempt at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of the country is incompatible with the purpose and principles of the Charter of the United nations".

I have cited the above ideas on self-determination because I suspect that TNA is here following what Mr. Balasingam in the halcyon days of LTTE advocated. Here is what he said at the now infamous Vanni News Conference (10th April 2002). "By self-determination, we mean the right of our people to decide on their own political destiny. It can also mean/apply to autonomy and self-government. If autonomy and self-government is given to our people, then also we can say that internal self-determination is to some extent met. So self-determination entails autonomy and self-government. In the extreme case, in the last resort, it means secession". Later in the Tamil Guardian (see quoted in The Island 6th June 2002) he explicitly argued the LTTE’s right to "Tamil homeland and the right to national self-determination", not internal self-determination anymore!. He had been deliberately equivocal in order to hide the fact that self-determination was separatism. He mixed this up with autonomy to make it palatable to the citizens of the country. This is what, in my view, the TNA is also attempting to do. They want to deceive the people into thinking that the self-determination of the merged unit will not lead to separatism but only to autonomy. They appear to have forgotten that our soldiers marched from Mavil Aru in the east to Mannar in the west and doubled back to Nandikadal in order to defeat once and for all the separatism of the LTTE. As the President has already said the short answer to TNA should be NO MERGER, NO SELF-DETERMINATION. This is the verdict expected from the Tamil people who have already traversed this via dolorosa (way of sorrow) only to be bitterly disappointed and end up as impoverished hostages and penniless IDPs. The current TNA is not prepared to learn from recent events and it is time that it too is replaced with persons who think Sri Lankan first and Tamil or Hindu thereafter. I hope the current split in the TNA will lead to this eventuality.