The upcoming Local Government Elections will see unprecedented fierce campaigning by all Tamil political parties in the Northern and Eastern Provinces where Tamils are the predominant community. 

For the first time in Sri Lankan history, the Tamil parties will be up against a Sinhala-led national party, the National People’s Power (NPP), which emerged as a force in the north and east at the last Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.

If a comment made by Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) Leader, Parliamentarian Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam during an interview with the Colombo correspondent of The Hindu, Meera Srinivasan recently is anything to go by, Tamil parties seem to be fighting a political battle to avoid an ‘electoral disaster.’

The unprecedented achievement of the ruling NPP by bagging more seats in the Northern and Eastern Provinces than the Tamil parties at the November 2024 Parliamentary Elections raised questions about the future of Tamil nationalist politics in Sri Lanka.

The support extended by the Tamil people to the NPP, led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which has a history of adopting a negative stance on finding a political solution to the national ethnic problem through devolution, unsettled the Tamil polity.

There is no doubt that, after almost 16 years since the end of the civil war, the Tamil people turned substantially to the NPP merely because of their disgust with the Tamil parties, which had failed to adopt a practical and sensible approach to finding solutions to their problems as the situation demanded.

Tamil parties’ view

But it seems that the Tamil parties see the victory of the NPP at the Parliamentary Elections in the Tamil region as an aberration. 

There are Tamil politicians who argue that the election results cannot be construed as the Tamil people’s rejection of Tamil nationalism, because the combined vote share of the Tamil parties and independent groups is much higher than that of the NPP in the north. 

It is intriguing that the Tamil political leaders still think that the Tamil people wanted to teach them a lesson merely because their parties did not work together.

Even Ponnambalam, who usually hated forming alliances with other Tamil parties, has stitched a new alliance for the Local Government Elections, albeit with some smaller groups. 

The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK ) is contesting alone. However, due to the current electoral system, it avoids campaigning against other Tamil parties vigorously as their cooperation is necessary to form the administrations in the local councils after the hustings.

The ITAK, TNPF, and Democratic Tamil National Alliance (DTNA) are the major Tamil political formations contesting the local polls in the north and east. On the one hand, all of them are carrying out a virulent campaign against the ruling NPP and, on the other, views expressed by them on the manner in which the Tamil people should vote expose a fierce inter-party rivalry.

Tamil nationalism

Leaders of every Tamil party are asking the Tamils to vote only for them and appealing to the people to use the Local Government Elections as a crucial opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to the Tamil nationalist cause.

Appealing to the Tamil people to adopt a new approach in the New Year, ITAK Acting General Secretary and former Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran argues that it is wrong to say that the people have given a mandate to the ruling NPP at the Parliamentary Elections in the Tamil areas, especially in Jaffna, which is considered to be the political and cultural nationalist haven of Sri Lankan Tamils.

Addressing a press conference in Jaffna last week, Sumanthiran said that the NPP got only 25% of the votes in the Jaffna District and that it got less votes when one looks at the votes of all the other parties. He called on the Tamil people to give them a clear mandate, noting that the Local Government Elections were an opportunity to test the claims of the leaders of the Government, including President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, that the NPP had won the Tamil people’s mandate in Jaffna because it had more votes than any other party.

“Our people did not give a mandate to the NPP or any other southern Lankan party. The Tamils should only vote for the Tamil parties at the coming elections. Our appeal should not be construed to mean that people can vote for any Tamil party. If the votes are divided among several Tamil parties, the results will be the same as in the Parliamentary Elections.

“The Tamils can prove that their mandate is for a Tamil party only by voting for the main Tamil party, the ITAK, which has been, for decades, incessantly championing a political solution to the national ethnic question on the basis of a federal set-up. Tamil people should vote to defeat the false propaganda of the ruling party about the mandate of the Tamil people,” he added.

Like Sumanthiran, the leaders of other Tamil political parties are also appealing to the Tamil people to vote only for their alliances. In making such an appeal, they can be seen to be claiming exclusivity – that they alone have unwavering commitment to the defence of Tamil nationalism.

Although the NPP is the ‘common enemy’ of these parties at the local elections, we are witnessing an unfortunate and ridiculous situation where party political machinations and personality clashes are a big stumbling block to their ability to work together on the basis of at least a minimum common political programme.

Tamil parties are in overdrive to prevail upon the Tamils that there is no difference between the NPP and the other main old southern Sinhala-led political parties when it comes to addressing the problems of the minorities, particularly those of the Tamils. 

Tamil mandate

At the same time, it is a fact that the approach and actions of the NPP Government in the last six months have not been able to sustain the confidence and support of the people in the north and east.

The Local Government Elections will show whether the Tamil people will heed the call of the Tamil parties, show their disgust over the attitude and actions of these parties, or show their dissatisfaction with the NPP Government.

There is also a question of how much interest the Tamils in the north and east have in the Local Government Elections. The Tamil parties are being forced to say that these elections are crucial to ensuring the very existence of Tamil nationalism.

Tamil politicians, who openly admit that their people wanted to teach them a lesson at the Parliamentary Elections, are again simply resorting to utopian nationalist slogans with no interest in changing their hitherto held political stance. Their future as Tamil nationalists are at stake at the Local Government Elections.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo)