Setback for Rajapaksa's
reconciliation By Sudha
Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Local election
results in Sri Lanka indicate that while President
Mahinda Rajapaksa can still count on solid support
in the Sinhala south, his post-war development
strategy to address Tamil alienation has failed to
cut ice with Tamils in the north and east.
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) exceeded
expectations to take control of 18 of 26 local
bodies in the north and east in the polls on
Saturday. Another Tamil party, the Tamil United
Liberation Front, took two local councils - both
in Killinochchi district - where it was reportedly
backed by the TNA.
The ruling United
People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) performed
dismally in the war-ravaged regions, where a
quarter of a century
of civil conflict ended in
2009. Despite pouring money and ministers into the
election campaign and freely using the military to
intimidate TNA candidates, it was able to win only
two local councils in the north - in the islets of
Delft and Velanai. Even these victories have been
attributed to the Eelam People's Democratic Party,
a Tamil constituent of the UPFA coalition, rather
than to the UPFA itself.
The north's
overwhelming rejection of Rajapaksa stands in
stark contrast to the south's continuing support
to him.
The UPFA swept the polls in the
Sinhalese-dominated south, taking control of all
the local bodies that went to the polls on
Saturday. The opposition United National Party and
the Janata Vimukti Peramuna were decimated.
"The Rajapaksa government has been saying
that all the north wants is reconstruction and
economic development. It has been proved wrong
now," Soosaipillai Keethaponcalan, head of the
department of political science at the University
of Colombo told Asia Times Online. "Tamils know
the TNA cannot provide them with economic
benefits." Yet they voted for it and in doing so,
"reiterated that political issues are still very
important."
Local elections rarely capture
international attention. However, Saturday's
elections to 65 local bodies were keenly watched
abroad. The contest in the north was seen as a
test of Rajapaksa's popularity among Tamils. Would
Tamils vote for the UPFA and thus endorse
Rajapaksa's post-war development-centric approach
to resolving ethnic conflict.
The decisive
victory of the TNA and the rejection of the UPFA
in the north and east indicate that they do not.
The Tamil-dominated Northern province was
once the bastion of the LTTE. In December 1995,
the LTTE lost control over the Jaffna Peninsula.
The locus of their power shifted thereafter to
Killinochchi, where its political headquarters was
located. In May 2009, the LTTE was defeated
comprehensively by the Sri Lankan armed forces.
The entire top leadership of the LTTE,
including its founder-chief Velupillai
Prabhakaran, intelligence chief Pottu Amman and
others were killed. Three months later, the LTTE's
overseas presence suffered a grievous blow with
the arrest of its new leader, Kumar Pathmanathan
or "KP".
A conglomeration of Tamil
political parties and former rebels, the TNA,
which has been contesting elections over the past
decade, was widely seen as a proxy of the LTTE.
Although the LTTE itself never contested
elections, it was very much an actor in the
electoral arena, choosing the TNA's candidates and
publicly endorsing them. In parliament, the TNA
often functioned as a mouthpiece of the Tigers by
pushing the LTTE line.
However, since the
defeat of the LTTE, the TNA has moderated its
position and moved away from the demand for an
independent Tamil Eelam. Ahead of the
parliamentary elections last year, it announced
that it favored a federal structure in the north
and east with power over land, finance, law and
order.
The TNA's robust performance in
polls when the LTTE was around was often
attributed to the Tigers' backing, the argument
being that the LTTE intimidated voters to support
TNA candidates. However, even after the LTTE's
defeat, the TNA has done well.
Although it
lost the Jaffna urban council to the UPFA in 2009,
it fought the odds to take control of the Vavuniya
municipal council. In general elections last year,
of the 15 members of parliament elected from the
Northern province, eight belonged to the TNA. Of
the 16 seats in the Eastern province, it secured
five.
The TNA's resounding victory in
Saturday's elections to local bodies was achieved
against all odds. The ruling UPFA left no stone
unturned to win. Members of the Rajapaksa family,
including the president, and scores of UPFA
ministers campaigned for days in the north.
Their campaign focused on the government's
development work there - the buildings and
highways that have been repaired since the end of
the war. Their speeches were filled with pledges
of more development in the north.
Rajapaksa, who is under pressure abroad on
the issue of war crimes, was hoping for a victory
in the north as he could have held that up as
evidence that the Tamil people were with his
government and that the reconciliation process in
the island was on track.
The north's
unambiguous rejection of the UPFA in the elections
has blasted those plans.
The Rajapaksas
are not amused. Economic Development Minister
Basil Rajapaksa, who is the president's brother,
has expressed displeasure over the results in the
north. "The president has extended his hand for
the development of North, but they refuse it," he
complained.
"It is not that we are opposed
to economic development of the north or even
saying that development and reconstruction should
wait until a political solution is found," a
Jaffna university professor told Asia Times Online
on condition of anonymity. "What we are opposed to
is the Rajapaksa government's attempt to
substitute a political solution with buildings and
bridges."
Stressing that "political issues
underlying the conflict are more important for the
Tamil people than construction of roads and
ports", he pointed out that "a political solution
is essential for lasting peace".
Clearly,
the TNA read the Tamil mood better.
TNA
parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran said the TNA
"campaigned for a dignified political settlement"
and asked voters to give them a "mandate to fight
for some sort of regional autonomy".
The
TNA's focus on a fair political solution resonated
with Tamils. They gave the party their votes.
N Shanmugaratnam, a professor of Sri
Lankan Tamil origin at the Norwegian University of
Life Sciences in As, Norway, has argued that
resettlement and rehabilitation or private
investment and other similar activities "need to
be framed and conducted in such ways that they are
seen as steps towards linking development with a
political solution rather than using it to
sidestep the latter".
But Rajapaksa's
development-centric post-war strategy seems aimed
at avoiding a political solution. Since the end of
the war, his government has been diluting promises
made earlier to strengthen devolution of power to
the north and east. Increasingly it appears to be
the view that there is no need for devolution at
all, that Tamil reconciliation can be bought with
development projects.
A recent report on
Sri Lanka by the International Crisis Group
observes that two years after the end of the war,
the country is further away from reconciliation
than ever.
"Post-conflict efforts to bring
societies together are always fraught with
difficulties, particularly in cases of deep ethnic
division. In Sri Lanka, the challenge is even
greater," the report says, "because the government
denies that ethnicity was the driving factor
behind the civil war. Instead it appropriated the
language of the 'war on terror', dehumanizing its
enemies and dismissing the possibility that they,
or those they claimed to represent, have
legitimate grievances."
"If the ethnic
polarization in the voting pattern between North
and South is to end, it is necessary for the
government to stop denying the existence of ethnic
differences within the polity and instead deal
differently with the problem," observed political
commentator Jehan Perera in an opinion piece in
The Island.
"Tamils have little interest
in reconciliation without resolution of the
political issues," said Keethaponcalan of the
University of Colombo. "Proper reconciliation can
come only after a political solution is found," he
says.
With Rajapaksa refusing to
acknowledge, let alone address the political
issues that lie at the core of the conflict, the
alienation of Tamils will remain high. In the
circumstances, reconciliation remains a distant
dream.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore. She can be reached at
sudha98@hotmail.com
(Copyright 2011 Asia
Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
