Author: TELO Admin

The Ilankai Thamil Arasuk Katchi (ITAK) regarded as the premier political party of the Sri Lankan Tamils has declare its support for Samagi Jana Sandhanaya (SJS) leader Sajith Premadasa in the Presidential election scheduled on 21 September 2024. The “Mathiya Seyal Kuzhu” (Central Working Committee) of the party met on September 1st and resolved to support the leader of the opposition at the presidential poll. The ITAK known in English as the Federal Party (FP) also decided to oppose the Common Tamil Presidential Candidate Packiyaselvam Ariyanethiran and called upon him to withdraw his candidacy. Ex-MP Ariyanethiran is an ITAK office-bearer.
The ITAK was the last among the important political parties representing the interests of ethnic minorities in Sri Lanka to announce its resolve to support Sajith Premadasa’s candidacy at the 2024 presidential hustings. Other important Tamil and Muslim parties backing Sajith at the polls are the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA) led by Mano Ganesan, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) led by Rauff Hakeem and the All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC) led by Rishad Bathudeen. It is clear therefore that Sajith Premadasa now has the backing of the major Tamil and Muslim Parties.

When the 2024 Presidential elections drew near, it was widely speculated that incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe would harvest the bulk of the Muslim and Tamil votes at the presidential poll. This was because Ranil Wickremesinghe had over the years acquired a minority-friendly reputation and had enjoyed considerable support among the Tamil and Muslim people. Moreover some minority community parties were constituents of the Government headed by him. Furthermore some influential MPs who had broken away from the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) as well as the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) were also supportive.

Sajith Premadasa

In the 2020 Parliamentary election, parties such as the SLMC, TPA and ACMC had contested as part of the Sajith Premadasa-led SJB alliance under the telephone symbol. They continued to remain in the Opposition. There were however great expectations that these parties would cross over to Ranil’s side when poll dates were announced. Thus the Ranil Wickremesinghe camp, confident of large scale minority community support was in a buoyant mood.
This anticipated minority party crossover did not materialise. The SLMC and ACMC representing Muslims and the TPA representing the Hill Country Tamils stayed put with Sajith Premadasa instead of jumping. These parties also signed separate agreements with Premadasa and joined the SJB led SJS alliance. Now the ITAK has also declared support for Sajith without signing a memorandum of understanding. It appears therefore that Sajith Premadasa will garner the greater part of Tamil and Muslim votes with the aid of these parties.

However, this does not mean that Sajith Premadasa will have a monopoly of the Tamil and Muslim votes due to the support of these minority-community political parties. In the first place it is uncertain as to whether these parties would be able to deliver the votes of the people en bloc as they have done in the past. There are discernible indicators that a substantial number of Tamil and Muslim voters have strong views of their own and will vote independently. More importantly the positive image of Ranil Wickremesinghe is likely to influence votes in his favour despite the stance taken by the party leaderships.

In the case of Ranil Wickremesinghe, he too has a support base of his own among Tamils and Muslims. The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) led by Senthil Thondaman, the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP) led by Douglas Devananda, the Tamil Makkal Viduthalaip Puligal (TMVP) led by Sivanesathurai Santhirakanthan alias Pillaiyan and the National Congress (NC) led by AHM Athaullah. In addition to these parties there are also some individual Tamil and Muslim MPs supporting Ranil.

Despite the support from these parties, there is no denying the fact that it is Sajith Premadasa who has the advantage over Ranil Wickremesinghe in procuring minority community votes as the parties supporting the Opposition leader are larger than those supporting the President. Nevertheless the support provided by these parties is not quite monolithic. Some influential party members including MPs have defied their party leaders and declared support for Wickremesinghe.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake

An important political entity that has to be mentioned in this context is the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) led National Peoples Power alliance. The JVP/NPP had not sought direct minority ethnicity party support for their leader and presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

Instead the party has appealed to the Tamil and Muslim people by reaching out to them directly. The JVP/NPP has recruited members from the Tamil and Muslim Communities and opened party offices in pre-dominantly Tamil and Muslim areas including Kattankudi in the East. It appears that AK Dissanayake too would attract a sizeable number of Tamil and Muslim votes at the poll though not be in the range of Sajith or Ranil.
It is against this backdrop that this column focuses on the potential voting pattern of the Tamil people of the North and East as well as the Hill Country in the forthcoming election. Particular emphasis will be laid upon the support extended by different political parties representing the Tamils to Sajith Premadasa and Ranil Wickremesinghe. I have in an article published earlier for our sister newspaper “Daily FT” (23 August 2024) written extensively about Muslim voters and the 2024 Presidential election. As such this article will be about the Tamil voters and how they are likely to vote in the presidential poll. Will Sajith or Ranil get the bulk of Tamil votes? Is the question.

Hill Country Tamils

The Tamils of Indian origin known as the Hill Country Tamils (Malaiyagath Thamizhar) are numerically the smallest (4.1%) of the three minority ethnicity groups and the fourth largest ethnicity in the Island. They are the majority in THE Nuwara-Eliya district and form a sizeable minority in the Badulla, Kandy, Matale, Kegalle, Ratnapura, Gampaha and Colombo districts.

The largest plantation worker union and chief political party representing the Up Country Tamils is the Ceylon Workers Congress. The CWC has been a constituent of President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s Government since 2022. It has two MPs -Jeevan Thondaman and Maruthupandy Rameshwaran – elected from Nuwara Eliya in Parliament. CWC Gen. Secy Jeevan Thondaman is a Cabinet minister. CWC President Senthil Thondaman is the Eastern Province Governor.
President Wickremesinghe has in recent times endeared himself to the Hill Country Tamils in general and the CWC in particular through several measures such as the raising of estate worker daily wage to Rs. 1700, giving ownership of line rooms to those residing there as a prelude to setting up townships with houses and by extending the “Aswesuma” poverty relief allowance scheme to the plantation sector. The CWC has signed an MOU with Ranil and will back him strongly at the elections.

Tamil People’s Alliance

Though the CWC is the foremost Party of the Hill Country Tamils, it does not have a monopoly of Parliamentary seats. In fact it is the Tamil People’s Alliance (TPA) that has the largest number of Up Country Tamil MPs in Parliament. The TPA is an alliance of three parties namely the Democratic People’s Front (DPA) led by Mano Ganesan, the National Union of Workers (NUW) led by Palani Digambaram and the Up Country Peoples Front (UCPF) led by V. Radhakrishnan. Mano Ganesan is the TPA leader t while Digambaram and Radhakrishnan are the joint deputy leaders.

The TPA contested the 2020 Parliamentary polls on the SJB ticket and got six seats. Three in Nuwara Eliya, one each in Badulla, Kandy and Colombo. One MP Aravinthakumar elected from Badulla crossed over to the SLPP Government in 2020 and was expelled from his party. He is now a state minister in the Ranil-led Government.

Though the TPA remained with Sajith Premadasa’s SJB in the Opposition, there were however rumblings of discontent and grumblings of dissatisfaction within the SJB bosom. Speculation was rife that the TPA was likely to cross over from Sajith’s side to Ranil when the presidential poll drew near. That did not happen.
There were two reasons for this. Firstly Nuwara -Eliya and secondly Colombo. In Nuwara-Eliya the CWC and the NUW-UCPF combine compete against each other on opposite sides during elections. By doing so both sides obtained 2 to 3 MPs each. For instance the 2020 election saw the CWC get two MPs and the TPA (NUW and UCPF) gain three MPs. It is only by contesting against each other that the two sides are able to maximise their MP tally.

If the TPA parties and CWC jointly support Ranil, then they have to contest together in the Parliament election also. This could result in both sides getting a reduced number of MPs. Besides the better established CWC could ensure that more of their nominees get elected at the expense of the TPA. It is this parliamentary election calculation that compelled the TPA to stay put with Sajith rather than cross over to Ranil’s side.

Mano Ganesan

The same reason applies to Mano Ganesan in Colombo also. Mano Ganesan needs to contest from a party or alliance that would poll a large number of votes in the district and be entitled to many MPs. It is only then that Mano relying on Tamil votes alone could get elected with comparatively less preference vote. In the past Mano was aligned with the UNP. In 2020 he sensed the UNP was going to fare very poorly and shifted to the SJB. By doing so, Mano won in Colombo.

It appears therefore that Mano Ganesan and the TPA opine that Colombo district would not vote in favour of Ranil. Sajith and Anura are likely to get the highest number of votes in the district. Hence the TPA in general and Ganesan in particular would prefer to back Sajith at the presidential poll and then contest on the SJB/SJS ticket in the Parliament elections. So the TPA signed a 56 point charter with Sajith Premadasa and pledged support to him.

Ranil Wickremesinghe

The TPA supporting Sajith had its negative fall-out too. The TPA’s Kandy district MP Velu Kumar revolted against the party decision. He signed a separate agreement with Ranil Wickremesinghe and is supporting his candidacy. The TPA that had six MPs in 2020 now has only four.

In a separate development, Ranil received a shot in the arm in the form of Badulla MP Vadivel Suresh the influential Secretary of the Lanka Jathika Estate Workers Union (LJEWU). Suresh who opted in 2020 to desert Ranil and join Sajith got estranged from the latter. He is now back with the UNP and was appointed State Minister of Labour.
Thus Ranil appears to be on a strong footing as far as “Malaiagath Thamizhar” (Hill Country Tamils) voters are concerned with the CWC, LJEWU and MPs like Aravinthakumar and Velu Kumar supporting him. It is very likely that Ranil will get more Indian Tamil votes than Sajith.

Sri Lankan Tamils

The Sri Lankan Tamils are the second largest (11.1%) ethnicity in the Island and largest of the three minority communities. They are the majority in the Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mannar,Vavuniya,Mullaitheevu and Batticaloa districts. They are also the second largest community in the Trincomalee district and third largest in the Amparai district. The Sri Lankan Tamils are also a substantive minority in the Colombo,Gampaha, Puttalam and Kandy districts.
The premier political configuration of the Sri Lankan Tamils was until recently the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). It obtained ten seats in the 2020 elections. The TNA is fractured now with two of its three constituents the TELO and PLOTE forming a new alliance called the Democratic Tamil National Alliance (DTNA) along with three other parties including the EPRLF. The chief TNA constituent Ilankai Thamil Arasuk Katchi (ITAK) now stands alone. Of the ten original TNA Parliamentarians, the ITAK has six MPs while the TELO and PLOTE have three and one respectively.
Currently the five constituent parties of The DTNA along with two other parties have declared their support for the so called Common Tamil presidential candidate Packiyaselvam Ariyanethiran. The 69-year-old Ariyanethiran served as Batticaloa district MP from 2004 to 2015. He was elected from the ITAK. Though Ariyanethiran is supported by seven Tamil parties there are doubts as to whether some of these parties are sincerely backing him. There is suspicion that some parties are clandestinely supporting Ranil.
In the 2022 Presidential election the then united TNA declared its support for Dullas Alahapperuma and not Ranil Wickremesinghe. Yet there were unconfirmed reports that only four of the ten MPs had voted for Dullas. The rest had either voted for Ranil or spoiled their votes. Ranil himself hinted jovially that some in the TNA voted for him.

ITAK

Meanwhile the single largest Sri Lankan Tamil party in Parliament, the ITAK has declared its support for Sajith Premadasa. This is a morale booster for Sajith and a big blow to Ranil. But the ITAK itself is now fragmented into two camps. One backs Sivagnanam Shritharan while the other supports Mathiaparanan Abraham Sumanthiran. Furthermore the ITAK is currently enmeshed in a legal tangle.
As mentioned earlier the ITAK central working committee has decided to support Sajith Premadasa. It has asked Ariyanethiran who is an ITAK stalwart to withdraw his presidential candidacy. Despite the Central Committee decision, there are many in the ITAK including Jaffna MP Shritharan and Trincomalee MP Shanmugam Kugathasan who are supportive of Ariyanethiran the Common Tamil candidate. It appears that a powerful segment within the ITAK will back Ariyanethiran over Premadasa. As stated in this column last week the seriously divided ITAK is heading for a permanent rupture.

Packiyaselvam Ariyanethiran

The ITAK internal crisis will also impact adversely on Sajith Premadasa. The ITAK will be unable to support him unitedly and enthusiastically. Furthermore the pro- Ariyanethiran elements in the ITAK will actively oppose Sajith. Meetings in support of Packiyaselvam Ariyanethiran with ITAK member participation have already been held in districts like Kilinochchi.Trincomalee and Batticaloa.
ITAK spokesman MA Sumanthiran has often claimed that the Tamil people of the North and the East have adhered to their guidelines and voted for Sarath Fonseka, Maithripala Siriena and Sajith Premadasa in the 2010, 2015 and 2019 presidential elections. It remains to be seen as to whether the Tamils will respond favourably in large numbers to the ITAK call and vote for Premadasa on 21 September.
What must be remembered is that the ITAK asking the Tamil people to vote for one Sinhala candidate over another Sinhala candidate is one thing but to ask the Tamils to vote for a Sinhala party candidate over one described as the Common Tamil candidate is another thing.
The ITAK decision to support Sajith is no doubt a great disappointment to Ranil. With the ITAK backing Sajith and seven other parties supporting Ariyanethiran, Ranil is in an unenviable position.

EPDP and TMVP

What Ranil is sure of at present is the support of two Tamil parties in addition to his own UNP. The EPDP led by Douglas Devananda and the TMVP led by Santhirakanthan alias Pillayan are part of the Wickremesinghe Govt. Devananda is a Cabinet minister and Pillayan a state minister. The EPDP has two elected MPs. The TMVP’s Pillayan got the highest number of preference votes in Batticaloa. Devananda also has a limited yet stable vote bank in the North.
Batticaloa MP Viyalendran who split from the TNA and joined the SLPP in 2018 is now a state minister. He too is backing Ranil. Angajan Ramanathan who was the only MP to get elected on the SLFP ticket in 2020 is also supporting Ranil. Angajan got the highest number of preference votes in Jaffna in 2020.

Optimism in Ranil’s Camp

Though Ranil’s Tamil party support is limited, there is optimism in his camp that the Sri Lankan Tamils would be very supportive of Wickremesinghe on election day. These sections opine that Ranil could appeal to the Tamil people directly regardless of Tamil party support and harvest Tamil votes. Given the positive image enjoyed by Ranil among North-eastern Tamils, this move could prove successful.
D.B.S.Jeyaraj can be reached at dbsjeyaraj@yahoo.com

Deputy Postmaster General Rajitha Ranasinghe stated that the turnout for postal voting in the 2024 Presidential Election was high over the past two days.

Speaking at a press conference held today (06), he said that more than 80% have cast their postal votes during the last two days.

“According to reports, more than 80% of the (postal) votes have been used, and the registered reserved packs have been delivered to the post offices in the respective areas. We compare this with the number of postal packs received by post offices. Therefore, it is observed that a large number of votes were used on the first day (of postal voting) and today,” he said.

A total of 712,319 voters were eligible to use postal voting in relation to the 2024 presidential election.

Accordingly, the third consecutive day of postal voting for the Presidential Election commenced today (06).

The Election Commission announced that postal voting is available to staff working in District Secretariat Offices, Election Commission Offices, Senior DIG and DIG Offices, SP and ASP Offices, Police Stations, Special Task Force (STF) Camps, Special Police Units, and VIP Security Divisions.

The officers of the three armed forces and the staff of all other government institutions could mark their votes yesterday and today, and the police officers who were unable to vote yesterday have been allowed to vote today.

Meanwhile, the Commissioner General of Elections, Saman Sri Ratnayake stated that the postal voters who could not vote within these three days will be allowed to vote at their respective District Secretariat on September 11 or 12.

Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) will not cash the $ 1.4 billion Chinese swap and will use it as a standby arrangement as Sri Lanka has sufficient foreign reserves, an official of CBSL said.

Speaking at the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) on Tuesday (3), CBSL International Operations Department Director Dr. Sumila Wanaguru said that the People’s Bank of China swap worth $ 1.4 billion is not cashable at the moment as some conditions are not met, but will maintain it as a standby arrangement.

One of the main conditions of cashing the PBOC swap was to have three months of import cover in the reserves and according to Wanaguru, as of the end of July, Sri Lanka has 3.8 months of import cover in the reserves with $ 5,652 million.

Moreover, she said that the daily average depth of the foreign exchange market in Sri Lanka is about $ 75-80 million, while the liquidity reaches to low of $ 30-40 million and a high of $ 100 million on some days.

She said that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants CBSL to have $ 2 billion in net purchases from the market by the end of 2024 and that the CBSL had net purchases of $ 1.87 billion by the end of July.

Wanaguru said that the rupee is slightly appreciating at the moment due to high inflows and low demand prevailing at the moment.

She added that the CBSL lets the exchange rate fluctuate to control inflation but will intervene from time to time to build up reserves as well as curtail sharp depreciation as the CBSL aims at maintaining a less volatile currency.

During the year up to 30 August, the Sri Lanka rupee appreciated against the US dollar by 7.9%.

The death of 23-year-old Mano Yogalingam, a Sri Lankan Tamil ‘asylum-seeker’ on a ‘bridge visa’ in Melbourne, Australia, after he set himself afire should have shocked human conscience in the western hemisphere. It begins with the question how and why a 13-year-old in 2013, when he landed in Australia as a refugee, should ever have left Sri Lanka full five years after the end of the war, when normalcy had almost returned to the war-torn nation.

But the question is also about the overt concerns of the western world to allegations of human rights violations and ‘war crimes’, as is the case with Sri Lanka. However, Mano’s self-immolation in a skating rink does not seem to have triggered well-meaning human consciousness in the western world. Media reports quoting Australian authorities have said how Tamils in Sri Lanka ‘face a low risk of official or societal discrimination’ and ‘a low risk of torture overall’.

Australia is accepted as a ranking member of the western world in other matters, starting with the four-nation Quad, and the three-nation AUKUS, for strategic reasons aimed at China, yes, but on other matters, the US has a combination of other western friends and allies, whose views on human rights in third countries, particularly Third World countries, are conditioned by their own local conditions.

Thus you have Scandinavian countries, and those like Germany, all of them in post-War Europe, telling South Asian families in their midst, how their children had to be brought up in the new environment. You can call it homogenisation of cultures and traditions by force, playing on the greed, avarice and vulnerability of those parents wanting a western identity, green-card and citizenship.

All their efforts to be what they are not, subsumes their original identity and culture, and they don’t care. They are in effect and also in fact ‘economic refugees’, not ‘political refugees’, as they want the West to believe. It was the case with many, if not most of them, even at the height of the ethnic wars in Sri Lanka, for instance.

The West too could do with their labour but without the hang-over of their politico-cultural past in a distant country. Allegations of human rights violations on the home-front also ensured that the merged their cultural identities with their next-door neighbours and the larger community they lived in.

Threats of taking away their children for better care (or, bitter care?) were a part of the process. An occasional demonstration of the institutionalised legal threat helped, even though that might not have been the original idea.

Different world

Today, when Sri Lanka is having the most challenging presidential elections, post-independence, the West is behaving as if they are in a different world, rather a different universe. Or, they seem to think that Sri Lanka does not belong to the Earth that they all live in.

Else, you cannot explain or appreciate why not one of those nations has appreciated and applauded every Sri Lankan and the larger Sri Lankan system for a relatively smooth-transition of elected national leadership with another, under another schemed prescribed by the very same Constitution, and the consequent return of normalcy, effortlessly. Through the past two years, post-Aragalaya, no one has talked about the mass-protests of 2022, nor have they threatened the State and the people with yet another of the kind.

If this is the western attitude towards democracy in the country, it is anybody’s guess why the Sri Lankan Election Commission (EC) should be bending backwards to invite a European Union (EU) team of poll observers to oversee the ongoing process, when on other matters Sri Lankan, all arms of the State swear by ‘sovereignty’, et al? It is equally so, why Foreign Minister Ali Sabry should be sparing time for the EU observers when he has squarely told the UNHRC, for instance, that the latter’s way of proceeding with ‘war crimes’ and ‘accountability issues’ interferes with and challenges the nation’s sovereignty, to begin with.

That way, Minister Sabry, and more so, the ‘independent’ Election Commission, and through them both the Sri Lankan State, have compromised the nation’s sovereignty, unlike in the case of the UNHRC and other UN affiliates, where ‘shared sovereignty’ of a kind has become an acceptable international premise applicable to all member-states, equitably if not equally. In such a scenario, what kind of ‘independence’ does the Election Commission assume that it enjoys – outside the Constitution, and not inside, where it still has its say and way.

Evaluating the vote

Leave the UNHRC, which is an extension of the UN but without the facility of power-play through the veto-vote of five designated member-States, and even the western-funded outsider-affiliates of the Amnesty and Human Rights Watch (HRW) kind, you now have the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) commenting on the continuing plight of the families of the Tamils missing in the ethnic war that ended 15 long years back. The ICRC in particular might not have exceeded its mandate, so to say, but their men on the ground at least should have known the politics of it all.

More importantly, the ICRC and HRW reports seemed to have been timed for the presidential poll, as if seeking to influence the Sri Lankan vote, one way or the other. It is unlike the UNHRC session, commencing on 9 September, where Sri Lanka has become a permanent agenda-item, much longer than the Ukraine War and even the West Asia tangle, if you forgot the past years when there was relative peace on the Israeli front, or Israel’s fronts within and with its disquiet citizens / neighbours.

The revived / renewed UNHRC vote on Sri Lanka will come up for vote in the first week of October, but only after the results of the 21 September presidential polls are known. This means, whoever is elected President, including the incumbent, would seek and possibly obtain more time to address the issues highlighted in the new draft. Minister Sabry having dismissed the so-called ‘findings’ in the initial High Commissioner’s report to the Council, now in circulation, every future government that is predictably in place, post-results, would (or, would have to) stick to the same.

The Sri Lankan interest in the matter will then be confined to the nations that voted for the US-led Core Group’s resolution, who voted against it (and in favour of Sri Lanka) and who all abstained. Given the current mood and trend, the nation as a whole will be watching the performance of the northern Indian neighbour in particular. Having backed the US resolution after ensuring amendments in the first year, India has mostly been ‘abstaining’ from the vote through the past decade.

Cultural invasion

For their part, at least two front-line candidates, in JVP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake and SLPP’s Namal Rajapaksa – the former supposedly the front-runner, and the latter believed to be the last of the four in the top-rungs – have clearly stated that they would not allow any harm coming to the Sri Lankan soldiers in the name of ‘accountability issues’ of the UNHRC kind. Incumbent government of Candidate Ranil has already rejected the UNHRC report officially. The other front-runner, Sajith Premadasa too is expected to do so, when push comes to shove.

There is of course a ‘common Tamil candidate’, who is not unlikely to obtain more Tamil votes than some had thought earlier. But the sponsors of Ariyanethiran have been clear from day one that he was contesting not to win, but only to send out a ‘strong message’ to the Sinhala South and also to the international community. None of the other front-line candidates as yet, at least Namal’s SLPP has since stated that the presence of a ‘common Tamil candidate’ would only negatively impact ‘reconciliation efforts’ (?)

The most serious of all post-war reconciliation efforts began and ended with the forgotten TNA’s months of negotiations with the war-victorious regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The latter had a global stake for being known as much as a peace-maker as a war-victor against terrorism of an unprecedented scale. The TNA also knew that if post-war Mahinda could not tell the Sinhala nationalists that he would not compromise on the nation’s sovereignty, none after him would be able to do so.

Yet, when it came to that, ill-advised as the TNA was, they said the unthinkable: that they were behind the US-led core group moving the UNHRC on ‘war crimes’ and ‘accountability issues’ as far back as 2012. That was the end of it. All later-day attempts for a new Constitution as Prime Minister Ranil promised during the forgettable Government of National (dis-) Unity, 2015-19, were farcical at best, and the TNA too played along, knowing full well where it would end.

Today, in a way, all promises of a new Constitution, whether from Ranil, Sajith or Anura, are not going to meet the Tamils’ expectations – which under the constitutional scheme comprises re-merger of the North and the East, and also a federal structure, which is just not going to happen. But then, the divided Tamil polity, starting with the ‘common candidate’ movement is not saying anything, at least for now, about the ‘accountability issues’, as enunciated for them by the rest of the world. Nor have they said a word during the poll campaign about the ‘cultural invasion’ of the Tamil areas and Tamil symbols, not just by Sinhala-Buddhist hard-liners but the Sri Lankan State.

Greater consolidation

On the face of it, the ICRC and HRW observations, carefully timed as they might have been, may trigger a greater consolidation of Tamil votes behind the common candidate. The same cannot be said about the UNHRC session, which is pre-scheduled for particular months/weeks in the year. Only the presidential poll has coincided with it this time, not that anyone in Colombo expected anything else from the pen of the High Commissioner.

Whatever that be, any debate nearer home on these issues, especially in the face of the UNHRC session beginning next week, could lead to a sudden interest in an ethnic solution, and the larger political issue(s) that have not found their customary place and pace in the nation’s electoral process. That is because the economy, both national and personal, is of greater and immediate concern for every stake-holder, big and small, governmental and individualistic.

But any overnight pick-up in political momentum could have the potential to reshape the electoral campaign in ways not thought of since, this time round. If the debates were to trigger Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist sentiments as never before this time round, the question is if it could reset the national agenda at the last-minute when every candidate and political party is talking economics, which many of them just do not know, or even claim to know.

That is the kind of situation some of the candidates may be hoping for – and others may not wish for. And thereby may hang another tale!

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)

Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa has strongly denied rumors of a potential merger between himself and United National Party (UNP) leader President Ranil Wickremesinghe, reaffirming the SJB’s commitment to an independent and clean political stance.

Speaking at a campaign rally at the Samanala Ground in Galle on Tuesday, Premadasa made it clear that the SJB would not align with any political parties that it deemed corrupt. “We have a clear program and a vision, as outlined in our manifesto. The current Government, led by the President, has claimed that many of our proposals are unachievable, yet they are now sending SMS messages to the public in a bid to compete with us,” he said.

Premadasa went on to accuse the rival Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the President of spreading false rumours about a possible alliance between the SJB and the UNP. “I want to address the false rumours being spread by the JVP and the Presidency, who are paying various websites to post misleading news on Facebook of a possible alliance as our victory becomes evident,” he said.

He reiterated that the SJB, if victorious on 21 September, would unite solely with the 22 million citizens of Sri Lanka and would not form alliances with what he referred to as “rotten losers and extremely corrupt political parties”.

Premadasa also referred to a perceived desire among certain leaders for a merger between SJB and the UNP including the President and the leader of the Malimawa (NPP). However, he dismissed the idea of any alliance. “Let them merge. The Samagi Jana Balawegaya and the Samagi Jana Sandanaya will not align with those who are destroying this country. On 21, a new era for the 22 million people of this nation will begin,” he declared.

Premadasa’s remarks come amidst increasing political speculation and tension ahead of the upcoming Presidential election.