As Sri Lanka hurtles towards the September 21 presidential election, there is still no coherent electoral strategy on the part of the country’s minorities. If the lack of discussion about Tamil aspirations by the serious contenders, all Sinhala-speaking Buddhist political parties, is a cause for concern, the fact that the Tamil parties have not been able to put up a united front severely limits their bargaining power.
Most Tamils are either Hindus or Christians. Although the country’s Muslims largely speak Tamil, they consider themselves ethnically distinct from the other Tamils. The Tamils are further divided into Indian Tamils and Sri Lankan Tamils. The Indian Tamils, who are also known as “plantation Tamils” or “hill Tamils”, were taken from India by the British centuries ago to work in the plantations as indentured labour. The demands of the hill Tamils are qualitatively very different from those of the Sri Lankan Tamils, who inhabit the northern and eastern regions.
National question
The serious contenders, such as President Ranil Wickremesinghe, former Minister Sajith Premadasa, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna’s (JVP) Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son Namal Rajapaksa, have spoken little about what is known as the “national question”: a political solution to the hopes and aspirations of the Tamil people living in the northern and eastern regions of the country. So much so that when Wickremesinghe was in Tamil-dominated Jaffna recently, he made it a point to speak in Sinhala. He did the same in Batticaloa, another Tamil and Muslim town in the east. “I took this responsibility to fight for you [becoming President in 2022],” he told the largely unmoved audience in Eravur, Batticaloa. “There was no fertilizer or petrol. The economy had come to a halt.” He added that he had turned around the country in a short period.
There was no word on the Tamil question. He focussed on the economy and how he had redeemed the entire country from the financial crisis. In fact, after detailing the government’s measures during the economic crisis, he said: “What more should I do? Even for this, leaders of political parties did not cooperate. They are only interested in their problems, not yours.”
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Although both Premadasa and Dissanayake met representatives of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) in Jaffna, both are yet to speak on whether they are in favour of a federal set-up for the North and the East. In a meeting earlier this year in Vavuniya, Dissanayake said that there must be Ministers representing the North in a future government of the National People’s Power (NPP), the coalition entity that the JVP has formed. “We are already having discussions with the moderate Tamil leaders. They must be part of the NPP government,” he added. Incidentally, the JVP was responsible for many anti-Tamil pogroms in the 1980s, although it claims to be a Marxist-Leninist communist party.
Until June, Dissanayake was a clear front-runner in the presidential race. A few leaders in Sri Lanka believe that the moment he began talking about policies and programmes in the event of coming to power, he began faltering. Some polls show that he is still ahead in the race. His new-found importance received a boost when he was invited to New Delhi for top-level meetings with officials in February this year.
Tamil candidate
On August 8, seven Tamil political parties and a host of civil society organisations named P. Ariyanethran, a locally well-received but second-rung Tamil politician who belongs to the ITAK, as the common Tamil candidate. Since Tamils account for just over 2 million (20 lakh) in a voting population of just over 17 million (1.7 crore), there is no possibility of a Tamil candidate winning the race. But the political parties are approaching voters and requesting them to cast their first preference vote for the Tamil candidate. (A candidate has to gain 50 per cent plus one vote to win. If he does not, then the second and third preference votes are counted. There is no possibility of a run-off election as in the Maldives. The counting of the second and third preference votes gets complicated because the value of these votes is lower than that of the first preference vote.)
The inner-party differences in the ITAK, the strongest party in the Tamil pantheon, have come out in the open with the party’s recently elected leader, S. Sritharan, deciding to support Ariyanethran. This happened soon after a party meeting seeking an explanation from the candidate as to why he was contesting without the consent of the party’s top decision-making body. Sritharan had presided over this party meeting because he was elected the party’s president in January this year. Soon after the ITAK meeting, Sritharan, who was aware that only 3 of the 33 members supported a common Tamil candidate, met Ariyanethran and endorsed his candidature. M.A. Sumanthiran, ITAK leader, who had contested against Sritharan and lost, is of the view that a common Tamil candidate was not the way forward.
Volunteers prepare for a May 18 ceremony in Mullivaikkal, northern Sri Lanka, marking 15 years since the end of the Tamil separatist war that claimed over 100,000 lives on May 17, 2024. | Photo Credit: AFP
V. Thanabalasingham, former Chief Editor of the Thinakkural newspaper, said: “Sritharan decided to support the Tamil common candidate no matter what decision the ITAK takes. Is this the way a senior politician [conducts himself], one who has been in parliament for 15 years, is elected as the leader of the party, and who directs how members should behave in future under his leadership?”
The friction within the ITAK appears to be an attempt by Sritharan to assert his supremacy in the party. But the manner in which this struggle is playing out, soon after the demise of its former leader R. Sampanthan, has created uncertainty within the party. The problem appears all the more grave since such differences in the party will affect its chances in the parliamentary election, which is slated to follow the presidential election.
TNA collapse
Also, the ITAK-headed Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has all but collapsed. For more than a decade after the fall of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), it was the TNA that had carried the hopes and aspirations of the Tamil people. TNA leader Sampanthan and his supporters had tried very hard to figure out a solution with the help of the Sri Lankan and Indian governments. Because of the intransigence of successive regimes in Sri Lanka, there was no progress on this issue.
“The inevitable reality of Sri Lankan politics is that both Tamils and Muslims do not generally matter in a presidential election or in forming a government.”
The ITAK had earlier stated that it would decide the question of support once the candidates published their manifestos. The party has noted that two of the main candidates (from the NPP and Premadasa’s Samagi Jana Balawegaya) have promised to abolish the executive presidency, but it is also wary of the fact that this is one of the pledges that all candidates make ahead of an election.
P. Ariyanethran, the common Tamil candidate for the presidential election. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
While the question of internal unity will be debated in the party’s committees, one curious development in August was Sumanthiran and Batticaloa MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam meeting Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong. The TNA’s x.com handle said that the leaders had “very cordial and useful discussion on the current affairs and concerns of the Tamil people of the North and the East”. Sumanthiran later met Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha too. The High Commission said that at the meeting, of August 14, they “discussed issues of mutual interest and recent political developments in Sri Lanka, including in the North and the East”.
The Muslim vote
There are about two million Muslims in the country, who vote very differently from the Tamils. Muslim political parties have often been part of Sinhala political party coalitions, while many Tamil political parties of the North and East have remained outside government. In this presidential election, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), the largest Muslim party, is backing Premadasa. In early August, SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem made an announcement to the effect that the All Ceylon Makkal Congress, headed by Rishad Bathiudeen, is also supporting Premadasa.
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Wickremesinghe reached out to Muslims and said on August 24 that a new law would be enacted to enable Muslims to bury their dead. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the then President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, had ordered that all the dead should be cremated. This law led to protests, but the Gotabaya administration did not budge. Wickremesinghe and the other contenders have now reached out to Muslims in many ways to seek their support.
The inevitable reality of Sri Lankan politics is that both Tamils and Muslims do not generally matter in a presidential election or in forming a government. The Tamils had just one opportunity with the ballot to change the fate—in 2005, when Wickremesinghe contested against former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The LTTE, which held sway over the North and large parts of the East, banned voting in that election. Mahinda won with the narrowest of margins, and then began a campaign that obliterated the LTTE. He won the snap election in 2010 too but lost in 2015 only because the Sinhala people were upset with him, not because of the atrocities that the Sinhala Army heaped on the Tamils.
Despite this bleak scenario, many Tamils hold on to hope and fight and vote in the elections.
