Tamil problem still needs resolution

By Dayan Jayatilleka
Courtesy: THE STRAITS TIMES

(May 03, Singapore City, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sri Lanka’s leader Mahinda Rajapakse has scored a triple triumph - or in the parlance of that cricketing country, a ‘hat-trick’. He won a Thirty Years War less than a year ago and back-to-back elections, presidential and parliamentary, this year.

The President’s bloc, the United People's Freedom Alliance (Upfa), is within easy reach of its goal of a two–thirds majority in the legislature: the magic figure that unlocks the door to ambitious constitutional change or a new Constitution. In the wake of a protracted civil war, the drafting of a new basic law can be a moment of national refounding.

But the parliamentary elections this month also revealed that the country's Tamil minority is still largely alienated from the larger political community. A high percentage of those in the island’s north and east abstained from voting.

The federalist Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (Itak) and the more militant splinter groups all won support in varying degrees, with the latter obtaining less than 5 per cent of the vote. The overall result in the north: a victory for the federalist Tamil parliamentarians, with the Itak emerging as the pre-eminent player on the Tamil side.

Still, the ruling Upfa coalition managed to garner around a third of the votes cast in the north and east. It even gained a foothold in the Jaffna peninsula, thanks to its Tamil ally, former rebel Douglas Devananda. For the first time in decades, the state's political presence stretches from the south to the north, albeit thinly in the latter.

The main opposition party, the United National Party (UNP), led by former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, obtained roughly 10 per cent fewer votes than the joint opposition did at the presidential elections, when a united front was temporarily headed by former army commander Sarath Fonseka. The retired general, who led the government's troops to victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels last year, was voted during the parliamentary elections as leader of the newly formed Democratic National Alliance. But he has been in custody awaiting trial by military tribunal, having been arrested shortly after losing the presidential election to Mr Rajapakse.
President Rajapakse has proven himself to be a superb politician as well as a successful wartime leader. His coalition now controls all levels of the island’s polity - the executive, the legislature, the provincial assemblies and the municipal authorities. This makes Sri Lanka, once a fractious multi-party democracy, a country dominated by one party.

While this should guarantee unprecedented political stability, will it help resolve the country’s longest-running problem? Will it integrate Tamil-majority areas into the rest of the country? Will we witness a transcendence of parochial Sinhala andTamil identities through an overarching and broadly inclusive Sri Lankan consciousness?

Much depends on how Mr Rajapakse chooses to invest the political capital of his cumulative victories. The historical precedents are ominous: On the last two occasions when a leader or administration had greater or similar power - centre-left Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1970-77 and centre-right President JR Jayewardene in 1977-88 - the fissure between north and south in fact widened.

Mr Rajapakse’s new Cabinet appears to be pragmatic and may be able to bring about reconciliation. In Professor G.L. Peiris, Sri Lanka now has the best possible choice as Foreign Minister: The former Rhodes Scholar was not only a professor of law and vice-chancellor of Colombo University but had also served as a Cabinet minister under two presidents.

The problems confronting the new external affairs team will be those at the interface of the international and the domestic: external issues with a domestic spillover and internal issues which become externalised.

Sri Lanka's relationship with the outside world will depend on two things: the political resolution of the Tamil problem and the improvement of civil liberties. Relations with India will be powerfully influenced by the former, while relations with the West will be inextricably linked with the latter.

The moment of truth will be the new Constitution (or changes in the constitutional architecture) and electoral system for which a broad mandate has been obtained and which are said to be due by the end of this year. The outcome will signal whether a durable accommodation can be reached with the Tamil minority on the basis of pluralism and power-sharing.

The writer, formerly Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies.