The way the Tamil parties in the North are going about the (s)election of mayors and deputy mayors in multiple local government councils after last month’s nation-wide polls, it’s becoming increasingly clear that in the name of ‘policy differences’ they are actually playing out yet another ‘ego war’ that has ruined the community enough through past several years and decades. In focus is former ITAK parliamentarian, M A Sumanthiran, at present the party’s acting general secretary, with ‘sky-high powers’ that includes the authority to forward the list of candidates and mayoral choices to the Election Commission.
That’s an internal affair of one of the many Tamil parties, but which is also still the dominant one, as the parliamentary polls and the present local government elections have proved. But the same cannot be said of the mayoral selection as alliances are being formed outside of the ITAK, if only to keep the party out of reckoning – but not knowing how to go about it.
At the end of the day, the ITAK is the single largest party / group in most local governments, starting with the prestigious Jaffna Municipal Council. It is also the only one to contest on its own without an ally. The party still needs the support of one or many of the other alliances in the mayoral polls. Herein lies the problem.
The ITAK has been stuck with the arrogance of being the single largest Tamil party for a long time now. In the now defunct Tamil National Alliance (TNA), they had insisted on allies contesting on the party’s ‘House’ symbol – and got away with it. In the changed circumstances, where the party is still the single largest one through elections but without majority vote-share, it has stuck to the same stand-point.
In mayoral elections, the ITAK declared early on that it would field candidates wherever the party has won the single-largest seat-share. Now, the Sumanthiran faction, with acting party president C V K Sivagnanam as the front, has struck a deal with former minister Douglas Devananda’s EPDP, where the latter would back the former for mayoralty in many local government councils.
This is not the first time that Douglas and the EPDP has done it. The last time too, when the TNA was intact and yet could not muster the numbers in councils like that in Jaffna, the EPDP offered support, when approached. It was the same this time, too.
Behind the back
The irony of it all then, but not now, is that the ITAK-TNA used to consider Douglas D as a ‘traitor’ to the cause, as branded by the LTTE in its time. This time round, with the decision reached, faction leader and parliamentarian Sritharan has recalled how the ITAK leadership had decided to work with other ‘Tamil nationalist’ parties in mayoral elections – but not with ‘traitors’.
Obviously, Sritharan did not notice this distinction the last time round, when a tall leader like the late Sampanthan was still at the helm. Nor did he have problems with Sumanthiran affixing his signature to the EC letter, asking for the allocation of the ITAK’s ‘House’ symbol for him in the parliamentary elections from Kilinochchi last year.
This time round, however, Sritharan sort of questioned Sumanthiran’s authority in the matter when he discovered that the Sivagnanam-Sumanthiran duo, if not the latter, all by himself, was going ahead with the choice of party mayors in his Kilinochchi district, without consulting him, without involving him. Worse still for Sritharan, party councillors in multiple local councils in Kilinochchi seemed to indicate that they would deal with Sumanthiran without him if that is what it takes to get their names forwarded to the EC.
It is sad that Sritharan’s election as party president in an open organisational poll against Sumanthiran is stuck in the courts, and Sumanthiran is still now in charge of the party affairs. It is not known why Sritharan’s legal team is not urging the court to fast-track the party elections. But then, any challenge to the status quo could well lead to the EC possibly freezing the ITAK name and title and also the ‘House’ symbol. Traditional party voters would not forgive those that had caused it.
Family fiefdom
If this in the internal dynamics within the dominant ITAK still, outside of the party there are others like parliamentarian Gajendra Kumar Ponnambalam, for whom the pre-Independence Tamil Congress. For him, the party is the third-generation family fiefdom, from the days of his grandfather C G Ponnambalam and father Kumar Ponnambalam.
At one-level, Gajan Ponnambalam seems to want all Tamil parties, including possibly the ITAK, to come under the Tamil Congress umbrella. At another, and more identifiable level, he seems wanting to lord over Tamil politics, especially in the North, the same way Sumanthiran too seems wanting to. Given the inherent limitations however, Sumanthiran seems less ambitious, at least for now, and will want to settle for control over the ITAK. That is not the case with Gajan Ponnambalam, or so it seems.
All of it means that Sumanthiran is at the target of every other Tamil leader wanting to make a name and fame for himself – whether Sritharan from within the ITAK or Gajan Ponnambalam and the rest, from outside. In this background, the Tamil Congress has tied up with what is known as the ‘Democratic Tamil Front’, which is a product of the forgotten TNA split. The ITAK certainly was the cause, and Sumanthiran possibly was.
Ask erstwhile ITAK allies in the now-defunct TNA and they would tell you how under the late Samapanthan, the former treated them as less than second-class citizens in decision-making, whether political or electoral. The formal split occurred two-plus years ago when Sumanthiran mouthed the ITAK idea for TNA partners to contest the local council elections individually, so that each of them could corner a few seats, and unite to claim mayoralty in a vast majority of local councils in the Tamil areas.
It did not find favour at the time, and the allies were convinced that it was a shrewd ways to get rid of them once and for all. Yet, when the local council elections were postponed then and were conducted last month, Sumanthiran’s predictions alone came true. Only that the breakaway allies under a new nomenclature, ‘Democratic Tamil Front’, have ended up signing up with the Tamil Congress and Gajan Ponnambalam.
Unyielding, unbending
It was unthinking to the point of outright arrogance that the ITAK has continued to insist on not sharing mayoralty with prospective post-poll allies in councils where they had come on the top. Those allies once seemed to include not only the Democratic Tamil Front but also the Tamil Congress, with whom the Sivagnanam-Sumanthiran duo held talks.
Because the ITAK was unyielding and unbending, the other two signed up for a marriage of convenience, but Gajan called it a ‘policy-based alliance’, or ‘kolkai koottani’ in Tamil. It’s anything but what it’s supposed to be. It’s as opportunistic as any other, as the purpose was to capture as many councils as possible against whatever alliance that ITAK may form or formulate.
All is fair in love, war and electoral politics, yes. But it’s laughable for multiple parties from within the Congress-led front and the Democratic Front signing up for a ‘kolkai koottani’ without mutual discussions and extensive internal debates. And the ‘policy’ that the Congress is insisting on, and on which the rest have signed up without giving it a second thought – because they don’t intend sticking to it either way – is all that the Tamil parties have been saying all along but without much success.
The only thing is that under Sumanthiran, the ITAK may not agree to give up on the demand for full implementation of the 13-A even while moving towards ‘federalism’, the one-point agenda of the Congress, which diluted its cause from the previous idea of ‘confederation’. It is an irony that the new-found Democratic Front allies of the Congress alone had initiated an all-party Tamil leaders’ missive to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi two years back, for New Delhi to press the then Ranil Wickremesinghe dispensation to ensure full implementation of 13-A, obtained as far back as 1987 through Indian intervention and participation.
Facing the electorate
It is in this background, the Tamil parties will have to face the long-delayed Provincial Council elections, whenever held. A lot will depend on the ruling JVP-NPP’s willingness to face the electorate elsewhere after witnessing a clear fall in their vote-share from the high 61 per cent in the parliamentary elections to 43 per cent in the local government elections – the same figure as President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s vote-share when he was elected, again last year.
The same applies to the Tamil areas, where the voter anger over the unending personality clashes through the past months and years had frustrated the new-generation voters in particular that they preferred the centre-left JVP-NPP, once opposed to ‘Tamil nationalism’ and still not supportive of the cause. The ruling combine obtained the highest vote-share and seat-share in the Tamil Northern Province, starting with the prestigious Jaffna electoral district.
If it had sobered the Tamil voters to settle for the Tamil parties in the local government elections, the post-poll behaviour of their political leaderships may push the voter back into the waiting hands of the JVP combine during the PC polls. Or, else more Tamil voters may stay at home than during the parliamentary elections and local government polls, than used to be the case in the past – thus sending out a further message, which however may not be lost on their leaderships.
Ethnic predators
Fifteen years after the one-sided end of the ethnic war, it’s ‘future imperfect’ for the Tamils of Sri Lanka. Even while unearthing new evidence to ‘Sinahala majoritarianism’, old and new, their lives and thoughts are sought to be controlled by their own polity and leaders. But that too is slowly changing.
The agitated media coverage of the discovery of human skeletons from court-ordered excavations in Semmani, to the ‘un-kept promise’ of President Anura Dissanayake to de-notify the government take-over of private Tamil lands under an archaic law passed close to a century ago, there are newer concerns adding to the old – war crimes probe, accountability issues and return of Tamil lands in military ‘occupation’.
There is not enough enthusiasm, especially among the future generations about the past sins of the ethnic predators from the other Sinhala side. This has caused a piquant situation and raised a poignant question on where from here for the Sri Lankan Tamils. The question strikes them in the face. But there is none among them to find an honest and enforceable response.
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)