Tigers get a boost at the ballot box
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - A bit of good news has finally arrived for the badly battered
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Three months after it suffered
military defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan armed forces, a party regarded
as its mouthpiece in parliament and beyond has defeated President Mahinda
Rajapakse's United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) in the first elections to
be held in post-war Sri Lanka.
Elections to the 11-member Vavuniya municipal council on Saturday saw the
pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA) emerge the largest party with five
seats. The UPFA finished third winning just two.
To be sure, the TNA's victory came in a small, local election. Still, given the
desperate situation in which the LTTE finds itself today, even this win will
come as a shot in the arm.
The past few months have seen the LTTE hit by a series of
devastating blows. Its battlefield defeat in May was accompanied by the
elimination of its entire top brass, including chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Last week, its new chief, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, was arrested in Southeast
Asia and handed over to the Sri Lankan government.
It is widely believed that Pathmanathan's arrest came on information provided
by his rivals within the organization, laying bare the severe infighting that
has gripped the overseas Tigers.
In the voting for the 23-seat Jaffna urban council, the TNA emerged second with
eight seats. The UPFA with 13 seats has taken control of the council. The UPFA
was expected to win both councils. The TNA win in Vavuniya is an upset. At a
time when little is going right for the LTTE, the electoral win posted by its
proxies will bring some cheer.
Both Vavuniya and Jaffna are located in the Tamil-dominated Northern Province.
Once an LTTE stronghold, Jaffna has remained under government control since it
fell to the armed forces in December 1995. Vavuniya has been a second home to
hundreds of thousands of Tamils displaced in the 25-year long civil war. The
displaced have come in several waves, the most recent being those who fled the
fighting in the final stages of the war between the army and the LTTE.
Local council elections generally do not evoke international or even national
interest. This was not the case with the elections to the Jaffna and Vavuniya
councils as they - together with the election to the southern Uva Provincial
Council, which was held on the same day - were the first chance for voters to
post their ballots since the fall of the Tigers.
The Jaffna and Vavuniya elections are seen an important indicator of the mood
among the Tamil people in the north. Would their perception of the government
be colored by unhappiness with the government's conduct of military operations
in the horrific final stages of the war and the hundreds of thousands of
displaced people languishing in fenced camps? Or are they looking to the
government with hopes of a better future?
Some have interpreted the ruling UPFA's strong showing in Jaffna as a sign that
the Tamils are endorsing Rajapakse's approach to the conflict in Sri Lanka.
This interpretation overlooks the poor voter turnout, especially in Jaffna.
While voter turnout in Vavuniya was an average 49%, in Jaffna it was just 18%.
Although the UPFA won 50% of the vote in Jaffna, it amounts to little given the
poor voter turnout.
Furthermore, a vote for the UPFA in Jaffna was not so much an endorsement of
Rajapakse as it was a vote for the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), a
Tamil party.
Led by Douglas Devananda, a militant-turned-politician, the EPDP has been part
of successive ruling coalitions in Colombo since the early 1990s. Devananda has
been a bitter foe of the LTTE for over two decades and his cadres have fought
the LTTE alongside the government forces. A cabinet minister in the present
government, Devananda fully backed Rajapakse's military operations against the
LTTE.
Yet in the run-up to the local body elections, Devananda and the EPDP were keen
to contest on their own. They were anxious to distance themselves from
Rajapakse. It was only under pressure that the EPDP contested under the UPFA
umbrella.
Rajapakse's decision to hold an election in Jaffna and Vavuniya barely three
months after the end of the war was under fire. Critics argued that settling
the displaced should have been his priority at this juncture. It is alleged
that elections to local bodies in Jaffna and Vavuniya were held in order to
signal to the world the return of "normalcy" to Tamil areas and to showcase
Rajapakse's commitment to democracy.
The election was a crucial litmus test for the TNA. This was the first time it
was in an election fray without the solid support of the LTTE. In the 2001 and
2004 general elections, the TNA contested and won easily. It was widely
believed that the LTTE was the architect of its victory, having vetted the
TNA's list of candidates and then endorsing them in public.
The TNA's election victories were generally attributed to the LTTE's backing
and its intimidation of voters. With the LTTE vanquished, would the TNA be able
to pull off a win? Would people opt to vote for the TNA in a free and fair
poll?
The TNA's performance indicates that it continues to enjoy some support among
the Tamil people. While its runner up position in the race to the Jaffna
council is a blow to the party and the LTTE, overall its performance has
exceeded expectations.
It is believed that the government is replicating the strategy it adopted
earlier in Eastern Province in the north. Following its eviction of the LTTE
from the its last strongholds in the east in 2007, the government held
elections to local bodies and followed that up with polls to the Eastern
Provincial Council. In the east, it teamed up with the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai
Puligal (TMVP), the party founded by the LTTE's former eastern commander
Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, also known as "Colonel" Karuna, after he broke
away from the LTTE in 2004.
Having completed the election to local bodies in Jaffna and Vavuniya, the
government can be expected to now start moving onto elections to the Northern
Provincial Council as well.
But the government would do well to bear in mind that elections by themselves
do not normalize the situation in a war-ravaged region. Neither do elections
alone mean democratization. Elections are perhaps the easiest step in the long
road to normalization and it is this step that the government is energetically
taking.
In the southern Uva province, the ruling UPFA swept to power winning 25 seats
of 34. The United National Party, the UPFA's main opposition, secured seven
seats while the Janata Vimukti Peramuna bagged one.
The UPFA is on a roll. It has won all provincial council elections held this
year and with huge margins. It secured 69% of the vote in elections to the
North-West Provincial Council, 60% to the Central Provincial Council, 68% to
the Western Provincial Council and 72% in the just concluded election to the
Uva Provincial Council.
It is likely to capitalize on this strong support among the Sinhalese. Support
for Rajapakse and his ruling coalition has soared following the defeat of the
LTTE and the end of the war. The coalition has never been more popular.
With the nod from the electorate in Uva and Jaffna, the UPFA can be expected to
advance in general elections.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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