As the campaigning for the Northern Province Provincial Council election builds up steam in this final week, the front-runner for the post of Chief Minister is sending smoke signals that are going to cause serious alarm. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA)’s chief ministerial candidate C. V. Wigneswaran is going around praising the LTTE’s slain leader [...]

Editorial

Ghosts of the past

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As the campaigning for the Northern Province Provincial Council election builds up steam in this final week, the front-runner for the post of Chief Minister is sending smoke signals that are going to cause serious alarm.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA)’s chief ministerial candidate C. V. Wigneswaran is going around praising the LTTE’s slain leader Velupillai Prabhakaran as a “hero” — and worse still, candidates from the party are warning of the possibility of another armed uprising from the North.

The former Supreme Court judge has been quoted in the Jaffna press as saying ,”Prabhakaran (the then leader of the LTTE) is indeed a hero….I speak out while being on the soil of the birth of Prabhakaran (Velvettiturai). He is not a terrorist… He is a hero and a warrior who fought for the liberation of the Tamil nation”.

Mr. Wigneswaran has the gumption to say this of someone who led a movement that claimed responsibility for the brutal murders of not just the scores of other Tamils who also ‘fought for the liberation of the Tamil nation’, but also a President, a Prime Minister of India, Ministers and countless innocent civilians, including women and children living in villages, young Buddhist monks and Muslims in prayer. How insensitive can one be to the feelings of the families who were victims of that murderous, fascist organisation?

For one, the retired judge, even if he was living in splendid isolation, cocooned in the ivory towers of Hulftsdorp, could not have been an ignoramus on the fate that befell his predecessors in politics, the Amirthalingams, Yogeswarans, Dharmalingams and Thambimuttus, militants like the Sabaratnams and Maheswarans and the moderates like Kadirgamar and Thiruchelvam who perished at the hands of that ‘liberation’.

What is he trying to do other than stoke the otherwise dying embers of communalism in the country? Has he been so insulated living in Colombo from the misery and hardships the people of the North and East went through under the jackboot of the LTTE?

Is it the novice in politics that he is, or is he just mouthing statements under instructions from one of the party’s masters — the Tamil Diaspora. One thought that his selection for the Chief Minister’s post, despite differences within the TNA, would pave the way for moderation. One believed that should it win the election next Saturday, a working relationship with the Central Government for the betterment of national reconciliation would follow. Instead, we have someone raising the ugly head of communalism yet again in the North.

Is the TNA so bankrupt as to play the communal drum once again like its predecessors did, and lead the Tamil people to still more violence in the months ahead? Or is it what others have feared all along; that the TNA members are mere sheep in wolves’ clothing; that their dream of ‘Eelam’ — the dream of the Diaspora living comfortable lives in foreign lands — is not over.

The TNA may whip up communalism to increase its vote bank, but this is going to have counter-productive effects on national security issues. At a time when the Government, partly under foreign pressure, is scaling down on troop deployment and the military presence in the North, these dangerous utterances by leading TNA candidates will give the Government the required argument to maintain that presence and the status-quo for the simple reason of national security.

The Northern Provincial Council election in the overall context is a waste of time because the Provincial Council system by itself is a waste of time. Given the volatile speeches on TNA platforms however, it takes a new dimension of dangerous proportions. With India breathing down the Northern Province’s neck, and the TNA being India’s proxy-party in Sri Lanka — their deafening silence on the poaching in Sri Lankan waters by Indian fishermen being a case in point — the Government would be justified in revisiting its decision to wind down the military presence in the North. Perhaps it is already regretting its decision to hold these elections in the Northern Province. 

President Mahinda Rajapaksa told editors of newspapers at his monthly meeting recently ” Dan balanakota e yaka echchara kalu naa (Now when you look at it, that devil is not so black)”, a reference to the TNA putting forward a ‘moderate’ like the former Supreme Court judge as its Chief Ministerial candidate. It was also an attempt to deflect the criticism that he had caved into foreign pressures, especially Indian, to win support for hosting CHOGM (the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) and agreed to hold these elections before November.

After the TNA released its manifesto reiterating its demand for self-determination and power-sharing through ‘shared sovereignty’– read together with the rhetoric by TNA candidates led by their prospective Chief Minister — the President might want to eat his words.

The Government’s campaign in the North is to showpiece the construction of roads, bridges, houses and its de-mining programme. The opening of the Kilinochchi railway station and the resumption of train services to the North, the linking of the North to the National (electricity) Grid by the President who spent the week campaigning are all for this purpose. The Government’s message to the voter is also that to continue this development work, they must have an administration that works with the Centre.

The TNA on the other hand, bereft of the opportunity to do any development work by itself, is beating the old drum of dignity. It is therefore, a ‘Development versus Dignity’ battle in the North. It is Hobson’s choice for the hapless voter who would clearly prefer both, but would end up with one or the other. 

A quasi-military administration in the North however hard they try to appease the Northern citizenry does not sit easy with the people to whom it has been dinned in night and day by the Northern politicians that they are an ‘occupational force’.
It is just four years since the end of the ‘war’ and the North is limping back to near normalcy. There is a severe shortage of employment opportunities for the young. But the platform rhetoric has an eerie echo of the past. We are seeing history repeating itself. And we all know what a catastrophe followed.

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