The North is not new to General Sarath Fonseka, nor is he new to the people out there. He had served as the Jaffna regional commander before visiting the region any number of times as the chief of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) during the end-game of the ethnic war with the LTTE. Yet, his week-end visit to the North, in his new avtar as the common candidate of the combined Opposition, has taken the battle for the presidency to the Tamil heartland as none other has done.
Incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa who advanced the polls by close to two years can be expected to campaign in the North and the East in time. Thereby would hang a tale of who went wrong during the war years, or who would stand by the Tamil community in the future, and what not. The debate will heat up in the coming days as rival campaigns enter the fray in a big way.
It is here that the role and preference of the four-party Tamil National Alliance (TNA) can kick up as much heat as dust. The heat will have to wait until the TNA makes its choice between the two main contenders known. There is already too much of dust in the air, what with individuals and parties now forming the combine declaring their intentions and going their own way.
Whether or not they carry weight with the Tamil masses, the 12 non-party’ MPs in a total of 22 and chosen by the LTTE forms the single largest pool in the TNA. They may be as divided as the rest of them. It would be ironical to watch not only the TNA, but possibly the ‘LTTE MPs’ too campaigning for one or the other of the ‘war heroes’ of the majority Sinhala community.
The strength of the TNA, or any political party, in the post-war politics in the country depends on its twin-ability to deliver the promises of the past to the Tamil community, and votes to the chosen one in the elections. On both, the credibility of the TNA seems higher than that of any other section of the Sri Lankan Tamil polity in the country. Or, at least that is how the two main contenders and their campaign managers have concluded, in wooing the TNA leadership head-on.
Moderate and modest as it is, the TNA leadership is caught in a quandary of its own making. Internal differences were inherent to the alliance that was forced out of certain divided sections of the Tamil polity, by the gun-totting LTTE. In the post-war period sans the LTTE, rather than attending to heal the wounds of the population that was caught in the crossfire, they were busy politicking on a political solution, which anyway was not in sight.
At the end of the day, even TNA’s counter-proposal on a political solution has not seen the light of the day. Where it is, what it is all about have all been lost in the heat and dust generated by the presidential elections. It is not that the main contenders are not talking about it but even the TNA seems shy of mentioning it any more.
Instead, a sincere and serious effort to bring together all sections of the Tamil-speaking polity under one umbrella as a mark of the new beginning could have helped check the divisive tendencies that were showing up from within. Only the TNA could have attempted it, and only the TNA could have succeeded. Not that success was not in sight. Such a scenario could have silenced the critics from within, or would have sidelined them completely.
The ‘Zurich effort’, when made, was initiated by outsiders with or without an external agenda. With the presidential elections already on the ticker, inevitable suspicions got aired, instead. The success of the meet should not be measured by the ability/inability of the alien organisers to bring the Tamil parties on a common political platform. They did succeed in bringing them all together under a same roof for the first time in decades.
The weakness of the TNA shows up in the fact that it is only a grouping of Parliament members, and not a political party to call its own. With the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC), the oldest member in the grouping, announcing its decision to boycott the presidential polls, it is anybody’s guess if the party would stay on in the combine for the parliamentary elections that are due by mid-April.
Thereby hangs a tale. The TNA won the last parliamentary elections on the ‘Bicycle’ symbol of the ACTC. If someone thought that the revived ‘Rising Sun’ symbol of the pre-broken TULF may be available to the TNA, Anandasangaree’s independent manifesto for rival candidates for the presidency has chilled the post-Zurich bonhomie, which in turn the unilateral political moves of the TNA may have killed in its own way.
It is unclear if the existing ban on the registration of new political parties will come in the way of the TNA naming itself as one, either as is known now or under a new style and symbol. Either way, the TNA that goes to the people in the presidential polls will not be the one that goes to them in the parliamentary elections.
Leave alone the future links of the ACTC with the TNA, whatever the form, the alliance leadership neither has the teeth, nor the will to ‘discipline’ M K Sivajilingam, the disaffected member contesting the presidency as an independent, going against what is being touted up to now as the ‘collective decision’ of the combine. Whether his cause for distrust is political or personal, the fact that Sivajilingam chose to announce his candidature outside the country, in India, also shows how distanced he may be from the people who he says he serves.
Ironically for the TNA, for the first time in its career, a section of the Sri Lankan media has begun charging the combine with twisting facts and turning arguments, to justify a choice, already made. Whether true or not, such reports have the potential to challenge the credibility of the leadership in the eyes of the Tamil masses. If nothing else, other disgruntled MPs could use it to choose their own ways – whatever their political standing in the community, or chances of winning the parliamentary polls on their own.
The choice before the Tamil voter is simple. The community and polity having convinced themselves over the decades that the Sinhala polity cannot be trusted to keep its promise, whatever the hue, it is anybody’s guess how and why the TNA leadership would prefer one presidential candidate to the other.
The Tamil voter is thus handed down with vague promises Fonseka kind on the one hand, and halting and half-hearted initiatives of the Rajapaksa Government on the other. The TNA’s choice could make the difference – to the future of the party than of the people, particularly between the presidential polls and the parliamentary elections.
Moderate and modest as it is, the TNA leadership is caught in a quandary of its own making. Internal differences were inherent to the alliance that was forced out of certain divided sections of the Tamil polity, by the gun-totting LTTE. In the post-war period sans the LTTE, rather than attending to heal the wounds of the population that was caught in the crossfire, they were busy politicking on a political solution, which anyway was not in sight.
Courtesy: Daily Mirror, Colombo, 04 January 2010
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