By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
Colombo November 8: Next week’s parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka are taking place in a situation where the political landscape has changed greatly as compared to previous parliamentary elections.
None of the traditional mainstream political parties are asking people to vote them to power. Their leaders are asking for votes to function in Parliament as strong opposition.
Meanwhile, the National People’s Power ( NPP ) led by first-time President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is asking the people for a strong parliamentary majority to run the government in an orderly manner. It does not ask for a two-thirds or five-sixths majority. Campaign speeches and media interviews of many of its leaders bear this out.
But President Dissanayake and the only government minister, Vijitha Herath, had previously asked people to fill parliament with members of the NPP as there was no need for an opposition! It was fiercely criticized by political parties and civil society.
Opposition politicians, especially former President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) leader Sajith Premadasa, are finding fault with President Dissanayake’s one-and-a-half-month rule and saying that NPP leaders do not have the ability and experience to rule the country for a long time. They try to create an impression that people have started to lose faith in the NPP.
It is unlikely that people will deviate from the practice of supporting the party that won the presidential election and bring it to office in the next parliamentary elections. Opposition parties do not know what to say to the people when seeking their votes. It is certain that people will give a clear mandate to the NPP to form a government with a working majority to fulfil president Dissanayake’s promises.
The electoral situation in the Northern and Eastern provinces is very confusing. It is feared that In the next parliament the representation of the minority communities, especially the Tamils, will not be cohesive and there is a possibility that each Tamil party may come to parliament with one or two members.
An unprecedented number of political parties and independent groups are contesting the elections in the five electoral districts of of the North and East. There could be vote splitting. A total of 2067 candidates are contesting for the 28 parliamentary seats in the five districts.
District-wise, in the Northern Province, 23 political parties and 21 independent groups are contesting in the six-seat Jaffna district. A total of 396 candidates are in the fray. In the Vanni district, 432 from 23 parties and 25 independent groups are contesting for the six seats.
In the Eastern Province, 217 candidates from 17 parties and 14 independent groups are contesting for the four seats in Trincomalee district. In the five-seat Batticaloa district, 22 parties and 27 independent groups have fielded 392 candidates. 630 candidates from 23 parties and 40 independent groups are contesting for seven seats in the Digamadulla (Ampara ) district.
A total of 8888 candidates are contesting this time. People are going to vote to elect 196 members out of the 225 seats in Parliament excluding 29 National List seats.
Excluding 28 seats in North and East, 6821 candidates are contesting 168 seats in 17 electoral districts in the remaining seven provinces.
In other words, 40 candidates are contesting for one seat in the South, while 73 candidates are in the fray for one seat in North and East.
A large majority of the candidates in the five districts are from Tamil parties and independent groups. In fact, most of these groups lack popular support. Many candidates are unknown to the voters.
Not only Tamil political parties but also independent groups have liberally used Tamil nationalist slogans to win votes of the Tamils. They incite emotions reminding them of past struggles. Even people who had no interest in politics before the announcement of the parliamentary elections suddenly entered the field as Independent groups and said that they were also determined to safeguard and foster Tamil nationalism.
A number of Tamil parties are funded by various groups and lobbyists within the Tamil Diaspora which aims to keep Sri Lankan Tamil politics under its control. “Foreign money”’ is largely responsible for the emergence of various independent groups.
Several academics and eminent persons in the North told this columnist that some Diaspora Tamil groups who contacted them asked if they could form an independent group and contest the election if they were given enough money. Political groups in the Tamil Daspora are contributing to corrupt Sri Lankan Tamil politics like never before.
If the Tamil parties sent to Parliament by the Northern and Eastern Tamils in the period after the end of the civil war had adopted a practical and sensible approach towards the Tamil question, Tamil polity would not have been so fragmented and degraded as it is today.
After the end of the civil war, the political leadership of the Tamils came naturally to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) led by the late Rajavarothayam Sampanthan. After that, the TNA became the main political force representing North and East Tamils in Parliament.
The TNA which had won 22 seats in the 2004 parliamentary elections could win only 14 seats in the 2010 elections. In the 2015 parliamentary elections, TNA’s seats increased to 16. In the 2020 elections, its seats were reduced to ten.
Apart from the TNA, parties such as Tamil National People’s Front(TNPF ) led by Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP ) led by former minister Douglas Devananda and the Tamil People’s Front formed by former Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran also made it to Parliament with a couple of seats each.
During the intervening period, differences began to develop between the constituent parties of the TNA. Accusing the flagship party, Ilanakai Thamizharasu Katchi ( ITAK) of trying to dominate them, Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) and the People’s Liberation organisation of Tamil Ealam (PLOTE) decided to quit the TNA early last year and contest the local government elections under a new formation called Democratic Tamil National Alliance(DTNA ).
Former parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran’s Eelam People Revolutionary Liberation Front( EPRLF) which had already left the TNA , and some other groups joined the new alliance.
This new alliance played an active role along with some civil society groups in fielding a common Tamil candidate in the last Presidential election. That election exposed not only the contradictions between the Tamil parties but also conflicts within the parties.
The Tamil polity is severely fragmented today as a result of the leaders of the member parties acting without foresight. They failed to realize their historical responsibility to build the TNA as a strong political movement of the northern and eastern Tamil people.
The ITAK, TNPF and DTNA are the three main political formations competing in the North and East. All of them are asking the Tamils to send them to Parliament with at least ten seats.
In both the North an East, the ITAK was known to have wide popular support. Does it have the same support now? Only this week’s election will tell.
In the last parliamentary elections, six of the ten seats won by the TNA belonged to the ITAK. The important question is whether that party will be able to save at least those six seats.
Meanwhile, Anti-ITAK Tamil leaders have trained their guns on the ITAK spokesman M.A. Sumanthiran. It seems that in recent times, no other Tamil politician has come under so much criticism as Sumanthiran.
Tamil politicians themselves say that the Tamils are somewhat inclined to vote for the NPP for a change after Dissanayake’s victory in the Presidential election. What other reason can there be for that, apart from the hatred of the people for the activities of the Tamil parties so far?
Amidst the political changes taking place in South Lanka, there is a strong feeling that there should be a strong Tamil representation in the next Parliament. But it is feared that the fragmented Tamil polity will not avail of this opportunity.
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo)
