On the elections in the Northern Province

The elections results do not give the message that the Tamil people are for devolution of power or for an Eelam. It just shows that outside Kayts they have only the TNA and TULF leaderships. The fact that the leaders of these two parties still adhere to the infamous Vadukoddai resolution does not mean anything to the Tamil people.

by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(August 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The so-called scientific method, which is long term politics, can take a back seat as we are already lagging behind issues raised by elections to the local government bodies in the northern province. In both case the hand of western Christian colonialism is clear but we will first concentrate on elections in the Northern Province. The TNA, the TULF and the UPFA won in the respective areas of the leaders conforming to the voting patterns of the Tamil population in Sri Lanka in general. Tamil politics as we have often said is top down and the Tamil people usually do not go looking for leaders. They in general follow the leaders depending on a number of factors the caste being one of the prominent. Except for in the islands around Kayts the Tamil people have followed their traditional Vellala leaders in spite of the fact that the other casts are suppressed by the Vellalas. In the islands around Kayts people voted for minister Douglas Devananda who has stood up to the terror of the LTTE and also the repression of the Vellala leadership and established a formidable leadership. This does not mean that the development programmes of the government have had no effect on the elections but the leadership factor had been the most important. If minister Douglas Devananda had been able to establish leadership in the other areas as well the results would have been very much different. However, it is evident that the UPFA has eaten into the vote bank of the Tamil racist parties to a certain extent through the development programmes, but it is also clear that the government has to adopt a different strategy to win elections in the northern province. The politics among the Tamils is very much different from that among the Sinhalese and UPFA has to learn as fast as possible if it were to be successful in the future.

The elections results do not give the message that the Tamil people are for devolution of power or for an Eelam. It just shows that outside Kayts they have only the TNA and TULF leaderships. The fact that the leaders of these two parties still adhere to the infamous Vadukoddai resolution does not mean anything to the Tamil people. The Tamils in the Northern Province in general supported the Ponnambalams in the pre state council days and then GG Ponnambalam. Then SJV Chelvanayakam gave the leadership to the Tamils in the eastern province as well from about 1970 until Prabhakaran a non Vellala was able to provide leadership using terrorist methods. He first used terror against Vellalas including Maheswaran, a Vellala terrorist. It was so with Douglas Devananda at the beginning, who is now firmly established in the islands around Kayts. The Tamils having lost Prabhakaran have gone back to the TNA and TULF leadership and there is nothing much to read into the election results. The government, rather the SLFP, has to understand the mentality of the Tamil people and cultivate a leadership for the areas other than Kayts as well. The Tamils will not find their leadership and the leadership has to be provided from the top.

It is unfortunate that both Mr. Sambandhan and Mr. Ananda Sangaree try to interpret the results as a verdict given for Federalism. If Prabhakaran allowed elections while he was alive the Tamils would have voted for LTTE and the pundits would have argued it as a vote given for Eelam. In fact not only the ordinary Tamil people even the present TNA leadership without shame accepted the leadership of Prabhakaran and claimed that the LTTE was the sole leadership of the Tamils. If the TNA leadership were to renounce the Vadukkodai resolution, which they should if they are to be considered a serious political party and not one interested in engaging in racist politics claiming that they represent the Tamil people, still the Tamil people would vote for them until a more convincing leadership appears on the horizon. The LTTE claimed to be the sole representative of the Tamils but what happened eventually. The Tamil politics is such that at no stage the will of the public is expressed. What is expressed "officially" is the will of the leaders whether in the Northern Province or in the Thottam.

Based on the election results and interpreting it as a verdict for devolution of power the TNA leaders gave an ultimatum to the government to come out with a response to their proposals in respect of the so called ethnic problem. The ethnic problem is a creation of the English rulers, just as much the "scientific method" is a creation of the western intellectuals, and with the support of the Tamil racist leaders, the western anti Sinhala Buddhist intellectuals and more recently with the help of the most incorrigible western imitators who are found in the NGOs and the Universities the west was able to propagate in the western world that the Sinhalese were discriminating the Tamils. The solution to the politics of the so called ethnic problem was the over representation of the Tamils in the Legislative Assembly, the fifty – fifty of G G Ponnambalam, Federal solution of Chelvanayakam, which invariably led to the Eelam of Prabhakaran with India trying to force its devolution of power according to the Indian model through the thirteenth amendment, without considering the different histories and cultures of India and Sri Lanka. The politics of over representation, fifty – fifty, Federalism, Eelam and devolution of power continued in the battle fields and as everybody seems to know "war" is continuation of politics by other means. Thus when the LTTE was finally defeated in Nandikadal the whole political process that commenced under the English in the Legislative Assembly lost and there is no going back to any intermediate stage between the Legislative Assembly that did not recognize the due place that should have been given to the Sinhala Buddhists in the country and the Eelam of Chelvanayakam and Prabhakaran. The TNA should realize that the "post war" or "post conflict" situation in Sri Lanka in the words of pundits does not recognize an "ethnic problem" or any new political solution to the problem. The political solution has been given in Nandikadal and the "ethnic problem" had been the non recognition of the due place of the Sinhala Buddhist in the country. All the "solutions" proposed and/or implemented from the time of the Legislative Assembly to the Eelam were geared in the direction of depriving the Sinhala Buddhists their due place in the country. The wish of the Sinhala people was not considered at all, and after Nandikadal the TNA cannot continue to ignore the Sinhala people, a lesson they have not learnt.

I find that there are two aspects to the propaganda by Channel Four of the BBC which is shamefully supported by the TNA against the government and the armed forces or the "Ranaviruvan". The first is the more obvious of attempting to frame charges of war crimes against the President, the Defense Secretary, and the commanders of various divisions of the Army, excluding the then Army commander Sarath Fonseka. The westerners wanted to use Sarath Fonseka as a "crown witness" but it has failed with the government acting fast. The second objective of the westerners is not to recognize or legitimize Nandikadal as a victory for the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. If Nandikadal is not recognized as a defeat for the racist politics of Tamil leaders (not of Tamil people) then the latter are in a position to claim that the process that commenced in the Legislative Assembly still continues. The west has to be reminded that military victories are victories irrespective of the methods adopted and that even if "war crimes" have taken place there is no going back to previous political positions unless it is reversed by further military actions. We reiterate that politics by any other means including military processes is politics, and the processes cannot be reversed claiming that they were not clean. If it is not the case then white Americans, Australians and other such people should give back the respective land and political power to the so called aborigines as the victories by the whites had been associated with war crimes. I am not saying for a moment that Nandikadal is associated with war crimes, and any attempt by the westerners to frame war crimes is bound to fail. The Channel Four of the BBC is gradually realizing it and this could make the westerners to resort to more drastic attempts to reverse Nandikadal, as the aim of the westerners to destroy the Sinhala Buddhist culture without giving the due place to the Sinhala Buddhists finally is pivoted to Nandikadal. The process that began with the Legislative Assembly and ended with Nandikadal has to be reversed at any cost in the eyes of the western Christian colonialists presently led by the Americans and the jets intruded into Sri Lankan air space do not augur well for the people in Sri Lanka except for the TNA leaders and human rights propagandists who may or may not be in the payroll of western Christian colonialism.

Finally the decision by the Commissioner of Elections to reduce the number of representatives to six has been opposed by the Tamil racist leaders and so called open minded liberal, Marxist, neo Marxist, post Marxists etc., in the NGOs and the Universities. The decision by the Commissioner is constitutional and hence legal and it is not difficult to understand the reason as to why these racist leaders and others are concentrating only on Jaffna. Why doesn’t anybody objecting to the reduction of the number of representatives in some other districts? The argument that the conditions have not been settled does not hold water as this lame excuse could be brought even after many years claiming that the so called refugees in other countries would come back. In any event the Commissioner of Elections has not been endowed with the liberty to take a decision on this matter depending on the so called conditions and allocate representatives to the districts, and it is a pity to see that the TNA and TULF leaders have not given up their racist politics. It is also sad to see that no proper preparation is done for the forthcoming census and the grapevine is busy with stories including one based on the arguement of unsettled conditions, which claims that a proper head count would not be taken with the usual three stages of counting. This again could be another ploy adopted by the Tamil racist elements to inflate not only the number of Tamil representatives to the Parliament but even the numbers admitted to the Universities from certain districts.