THE PARIVASA THE SINHALAS DID NOT GET
The elections are over and it is generally believed that the Sinhala people have voted for a UNP government. The newly formed Tamil National Alliance is happy about the outcome and most probably they want to believe that the Sinhala people having listened to them and through them to Prabhakaran have voted exactly the way the latter had wanted. The Sunday Observer of 9th December under the heading Tamil Alliance leader praises Southern voters said "the jubilant Tamil Alliance leader and the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) vice president V. Anandasangari pledging his support to the new government to be led by Ranil Wickremesinghe has praised the Southern voters for rejecting all racist elements at the general election". According to the "Sunday Observer" Mr. Anandasangari has said: "I salute the Sinhala people for not being carried away by the vicious propaganda to tarnish the political aspirations of the Tamils in the North and the East.". He has also said that the election results have highlighted the entire country's desire for peace. The entire country, except perhaps the arms dealers, is for peace but each person is having his/her own version of peace. Peace like anything else is "observer" dependent and what is peace for Mr. Anandasangari, with a confederation, is certainly not peace for overwhelming majority of Sinhalas including most of those who voted for the UNP.
If Mr. Anandasangari analyses the results of the parliamentary elections held on the fifth he would not be a jubilant person. It is true that UNF led by Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe has 109 seats in the twelfth parliament and together with the five seats of the SLMC, they have 114 seats. With the TNA supporting the new government most probably from the opposition, if not accepting portfolios in the government, we are going to have another parivasa government. This time it is going to be a parivasa of UNF and SLMC controlled by the TNA. The UNP will be controlled by the SLMC of Mr. Rauf Hakeem within the UNF, which in turn is controlled by the TNA, which is a mere puppet of the LTTE. Instead of the PA - JVP parivasa government now we have a UNF- TNA parivasa government. It must be remembered that the UNP (UNF) has only 109 MPs which includes the controversial MP from Jaffna Mr. T. Maheswaran. The new parivasa government for its survival has to please Tamil racists from Mr. Maheswaran to members of the TNA not forgetting Mr. Hakeem and company. The Kappan politics has not ended and no wonder that Mr. Anandasangari is happy even though his analysis of the election results on how the Sinhala people have voted is wrong. He does not know that he is saluting Sinhala people who wanted a parivasa government of the PA and the JVP, but unfortunately did not have a mechanism with the present electoral process to achieve that due to various reasons.
The final allocation of seats by the commissioner of elections to various parties was as follows. UNP 109 (District basis 96, National list 13), PA 77 (District Basis 66 , National list 11), JVP 16 (District basis 13, National list 3 ), TNA 15 (District basis 14 , National list 1) (They contested as TULF candidates most probably due to the fact that TNA is not a recognised political party), SLMC 5 (District basis 4, National list 1), EPDP (District basis 2, National list 0), DPLF 1 (District basis 1, National list 0). The votes obtained by these parties are given below. UNP 4,086,026 (45.69%) PA 3,330,815 (37.19%), JVP 815,353 (9.10%), TNA 348,164 (3.88%), SLMC 105,346 (1.17%), EPDP 72,783 (0.81%), DPLF 16,669 (0.18%). If the PA and the JVP had formed a front and contested as a single party the allocation of seats for the UNP and PA-JVP would have been as follows, as there would have been a change in the results of the districts of Gampaha, Galle, Matara, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Ratnapura, Hambantota, Kalutara and Kurunegala. (In Hambantota PA-JVP would have got 5 seats and the UNP would have been reduced to 2 from 4). UNP 99 (District basis 86, National list 13), PA-JVP 103 (District basis 89, National list 14). Island wide the PA-JVP would have got 4,146,168 (46.29%) votes, or 60,142 more votes than what the UNP got. When one considers the fact that more Tamils would have voted for the UNP and not for the PA or the JVP in Jaffna and other districts it is clear that the Sinhala people have not voted the way Mr. Anandasangari want us to believe. (The above calculation is based on the results published in the newspapers and on the assumption that those who have voted for the PA and the JVP would have voted for the new front. If a front had been formed more people would have voted for it. With respect to votes cast at elections, in general, (a+b) > (a)+(b). In otherwords the votes for a front of two parties A and B is in general greater than the sum of votes for the two parties contesting separately. In Marxist literature one often comes across the statement that the algebraic sum is different from arithmetic sum. However, I am not referring to that. It is clear that the Marxists do not know that in certain algebras (a+b) = a+b.) This is not an academic exercise and I have gone through this analysis to emphasise that the Sinhala people have not voted the way TNA (or Prabhakaran) wanted, as people like Mr. Anandasangari believe.
One could argue that, even with a PA-JVP front, the UNP would have still formed a government, as with the SLMC the UNF would have had 104 seats whereas PA - JVP would have had only 103 seats. It is not the formation of the government I am interested in but the way the Sinhala people have voted. Without the SLMC the UNP would have got only 99 seats, including Mr. Maheswaran and some SLMC candidates who contested under the UNP (UNF) symbol. From the results it is clear that the majority of the Sinhala people have voted for the PA and the JVP. The UNP (UNF) in that sense has no mandate from the Sinhala people to de proscribe the LTTE or to initiate so-called peace talks with the LTTE unconditionally or to form an interim administration in the northern and eastern provinces. Even if the PA had promised some sort of interim administration to the north and the east earlier, at the parliamentary elections held on last Wednesday they canvassed against such administration. Moreover what is significant is the number of votes the JVP has obtained. They have increased their vote by about 50% campaigning on the so-called Ali-Koti agreement and against any form of federal government. They campaigned in favour of a unitary state and people (Sinhala) have responded positively.
The childish talk that the Sinhala people have rejected nationalist politics (according to Mr. Anandasangari and co. Chauvinistic politics) by defeating the Sihala Urumaya has to be treated with the contempt it deserves. Unlike in the case of Tamils whose sole representative is the LTTE according to Mr. Anandasangari and co., Sihala Urumaya is not the sole representative of Sinhala nationalist policies. It is one of the parties and if we add the 50,665 votes the SU obtained and the 1630 votes the Sinhalaye Mahasammatha Bhumiputhra Party obtained to the PA-JVP vote we get a more clearer picture of how the Sinhala people have voted at the elections.
On the question of formation of governments it has to be mentioned that the system at present is in favour of the Tamils. To begin with though everybody knows that the population in Jaffna is very much less now than it was in 1981, in the northern province seats are allocated on the basis of outdated figures. Even if one accounts for those who were prevented from voting in Vanni due to security measures one cannot fail to be disturbed by the asymmetry of figures. For example, DPLF having got only 16,669 votes in the whole island gets one seat on district basis, whereas Sihala Urumaya which got 16,976 votes in the Colombo district did not get a single seat. TNA gets 15 seats (14 on district basis) in the parliament from 348,164 votes whereas the JVP having obtained 815,353 votes is entitled only for 16 seats (13 on district basis). If the total number of 225 seats were allocated purely on a national basis (not that I am arguing for such scheme) the parties and groups would have ended up as follows. UNP 103, PA 84, JVP 21, TNA 9, SLMC 3, EPDP 2, SU 1, NLF 1, DPLF 1. If the PA and the JVP contested as a front they would have got 104 instead of 105 (without taking into consideration the "law" (a+b) > (a)+(b). ) and the remaining seat in that case would have gone to the Independent group 9 of Digamadulla. The present district basis is biased against the Sinhalas and if it was biassed against the Tamils there would have been protests against the "racist electoral system of the Sinhala Chauvinists".
The voting pattern suggest that the Sinhala people wanted a parivasa or even a sahavasa of PA and JVP, but there was no way of achieving that objective. In any event the majority of Sinhala people have voted against de proscription of the LTTE , interim administration for the Northern and the Eastern provinces and unconditional talks with the LTTE. Instead of the parivasa they wanted, the Sinhala people are now saddled with either a sahavasa of UNF, SLMC and TNA or a parivasa of UNF and SLMC with TNA, due to the electoral system. Any result based on numbers whether in sports or politics is relative to the rules or the system and different rules would have given different results.
The UNF has no absolute majority independent of any system or rules and the vote of the Sinhala people should not be interpreted the way TNA wants it to be done. The majority of Sinhala people are against unconditional talks with the LTTE. There is nothing to talk with the LTTE. The LTTE insists on so called Thimpu conditions as Anton Balasingham has said from London interpreting Prabhakaran's birthday speech this year. In any event there cannot be any unconditional talks when the TNA as well as the LTTE (the sole representative of the Tamils according to the TNA. This implies that TNA in the parliament will only be the mouth piece of the LTTE and a parivasa with the TNA would become a parivasa with the LTTE, the latter having the remote control) insist on Thimpu conditions. This is an asymmetrical situation with the government of Sri Lanka imposing no conditions while the terrorist LTTE insisting on Thimpu conditions, meaning recognition of Tamils as a separate nation, right of self determination, northern and eastern provinces as the Tamil homeland. On top of that the Tamil racists want citizenship be given to any Tamil residing in Sri Lanka. Thimpu conditions amounts to recognition of Eelam and the Sinhala people have not given the UNF a mandate to have talks with the LTTE on that basis.
As we have said on number of occasions the terrorist group LTTE has to be defeated militarily. the westerners who have double standards are in the final stages of defeating Al Qaeda of bin Laden. When it comes to the LTTE terrorists they want the government of Sri Lanka to talk to Prabhakaran. Did the west try to find out whether bin Laden had any grievances? All indications are that the west after getting bin Laden would turn to Mr. Arafath. The truth is very simple. The west is against terrorism when the terrorism is directed against the western Christian civilisation. In Sri Lanka Tamil racism and its offshoot Tamil terrorism is based on western Christian ideology and it is against Sinhala Buddhist culture. More over Tamil terrorism is sponsored by the west. In spite of the so-called ban of the LTTE in UK Anton Balasingham not only continues to live in London but makes public speeches on behalf of the LTTE.
The majority of Sinhala people like many others want peace. But it is not the peace of TNA or of the SOLO -U of Mr. Lalith Kotelawala and co., or of Solheim and the west or of the Bishops. It is the peace that comes after defeating the LTTE. Those who are planning to defeat the so-called coming third uprising (thunveni keralla) of the JVP in the future could do well by cooperating to defeat the terrorism that has been already with us for the last thirty years or so. The TNA and the Tamil racists should not be allowed to misrepresent what the majority of the Sinhala people want, hiding behind the present electoral system.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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