Editorial

The established political parties in the Northern and Eastern provinces appear to be reeling from the aftershocks of the unprecedented grubbing they received at the hands of the all-conquering JVP/NPP alliance at the November 14 Parliamentary elections. The embarrassment extends long beyond the shores of this island nation.

On the face of it, the JVP/NPP won the majority of seats in all the districts in the two provinces with the exception of Batticaloa, but not necessarily the majority of the votes. In Jaffna, for instance, their vote share was 20 per cent which means that 80 per cent did not vote for them. This is the argument those licking their electoral wounds are proferring. However, the inroads made into what has been, for decades, a political ‘closed shop’ for ‘outsiders’ from the South carries huge ramifications.

It was after the 1971 JVP insurgency that the politics of these provinces took a turn. While the Government of the day was drafting the 1972 Republican Constitution, the leaders of the Federal Party and the Tamil Congress under the leadership of S.J.V. Chelvanayakam asked for a decentralised structure of government “where power will be the people’s power rather than state power”. There was no hint of a ‘homeland’ or Federalism leave alone a separate state.

Youth, both in the South and the North were being harassed under a state of Emergency. The FP and TC merged into a Tamil United Front and the ‘rising sun’ flag symbolising freedom was hoisted in Trincomalee. Hartals followed. The youth became radicalised and later armed with a helping hand from across the Palk Straits, by 1976 the TUF became the TULF; ‘L’ for Liberation, with a Vaddukoddai Resolution calling for a self-rule.

That newfound unity of the northern parties was not without personal prejudices that have resurfaced in different forms in recent times leading to the downfall of the once-monolith TULF. Kumar Ponnambalam, son of G.G. Ponnambalam who had famously advocated the controversial demand for parity known as ’50/50′ (50 per cent majority Sinhalese and 50 per cent minority representation in Parliament), was offered the Vaddukoddai seat at the 1977 general elections by the elders. But he was snubbed and deprived of nomination at the last minute.

Those were the early days when internecine rivalries were camouflaged by the cover of Tamil nationalism. The grandson of the Ponnambalam dynasty, re-elected to Parliament this time, probably knows best of such machinations in the politics of the North – not much different to the politics of the South.

The wins for the alliance in the Central, Southern and Uva provinces, outdoing the traditional parties representing the ‘plantation Tamils’ are also significant. The JVP’s image of the 1980s as an anti-Tamil party has been replaced with broad-based support from across the country.

Mainstream political parties had won elections in these parts until communal winds started blowing through the palm trees of the peninsula and the tea bushes upcountry. A fresh wind is caressing areas that had suffered bigoted politicians who hitched their electoral wagon to the communal star. Across the country, the results seem a total rejection of the status quo; the corruption in the South, the self-centred beating of the communal drum in the North and the religious drum in the East.

Today, Northern politics has exploded with several political parties, alliances and independent groups all vying for seats in Parliament. The majority were espousing Tamil nationalism, but the fact that most of them didn’t make it, is partly due to the fractured vote, paying the price for going their separate ways, and partly, the changing face of politics countrywide. That the JVP/NPP became the party to win the single most number of votes and thereby, seats, is not to be underestimated.

While it is premature to proclaim the end of Tamil nationalism, the results show there is a call for national unity from the people of the North and East with the new Government in place.

Unity, and the end of racist, ethnic and religious divide was the starting point of the new President’s speech opening the 10th Parliament on Thursday.

The speech also addressed with unprecedented bluntness by a national leader, a core unresolved issue of particular relevance to the post-conflict North and East – justice must be served to the victims, and the perpetrators must be held accountable, the President said. Ironically, both the revolutionary terror groups of the past that were responsible for bloodbaths, viz., the JVP and the LTTE commemorate fallen leaders and missing cadres in this month of November each year.

With the JVP/NPP electoral success in the North and East, a door has opened for domestically nurtured post-conflict consensus and national unity, more meaningful to the long-suffering people of these provinces rather than externally driven solutions by Western nations, UNHRC and a hostile diaspora.

“If we fail to deliver justice, who else will? Who can we entrust this responsibility to”, the President asked the newly-elected MPs, and the nation.

Some want the responsibility entrusted to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva – and this includes responsibility for uncovering what happened during the first JVP insurgency in 1971, according to documents published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). No doubt, the President’s commitment to a domestic enforcement of accountability and justice for all victims will be a setback for the various elements that converge in Geneva to operationalise external solutions and accountability mechanisms that Sri Lanka has continued to reject.

Tamil diaspora ‘leaders’ in Canada and UK in particular, continue to peddle and fund division within Sri Lanka to ensure their own legitimacy and political relevance abroad. The strength of the electoral vote-bank pushes Western MPs to shape their government policy towards Sri Lanka based on divisive narratives of discrimination and violations of minority rights. They seem out of sync with unfolding ground realities.

The ‘Eelamist’ diaspora; India that exploits the Sinhalese-Tamil divide for their geopolitical agenda; and those Tamil Nadu politicians who want to fan a Pan-Tamil federation – must take stock of the winds of change beginning to sweep the North and East.

With the JVP/NPP’s relative electoral success in the North and East, a door has been opened for domestically nurtured post-conflict consensus and national unity more meaningful to the long-suffering people of these provinces, rather than the externally driven, impractical solutions offered by some Western nations, the UNHRC and a hostile diaspora.