Election results,
IDPs, the west and the rest
The UPFA has won the Uva
provincial council elections obtaining a two third majority. It is
clear that about eighty percent of the Sinhala people have voted for
the UPFA, together with some Thamils and Muslims. Uva, Central and
Eastern provincial council election results indicate that Thamils and
Muslims in these areas are dissociating from Chelvanayakam –
Prabhakaran politics and are prepared to vote for the UPFA. However, it
is not the case with the northern province elections to the Jaffna
municipal council and the Vavuniyava urban council.
In Vavuniyava the separatist party Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) meaning Lanka Thamil State Party that was founded in 1949 to establish a separate state in the northern and the eastern provinces which was later called the Thamil homeland or historical Thamil habitats a la Dixit has won the elections. This implies that Vavuniyava will get a chairman who would agitate for separatism, of course he would say if power is not devolved, but those who know the Chelvanayakam policy of “little now more later” would realise that these conditions are meaningless as far as the ITAK is concerned. In Jaffna the UPFA won the elections but the turn out was poor.
It is also clear that in Jaffna the electoral list does not reflect the adult population in that town. When it is said that turn out was less than 20% it could also mean that the number of registered voters is much more than the adult population of the area. When one considers the fact that some Muslim IDPs voted at the Jaffna elections electing four Muslim members to the Municipal council, it is clear that the UPFA has failed to attract the Jaffna Thamils in spite of the fact that the number of Thamils in Jaffna is not accurately represented by the number of voters. This phenomenon has to be understood by the UPFA more than anybody else as the future tactics would be determined by the interpretations of the present situations.
To understand the differences in voting patterns at the northern province elections and at the other provinces we should go back to the history of the Thamils and Thamil politics. Whatever is said by the historians it is now clear that what we have in Jaffna and the northern province is a Vellala dominated culture. Prabhakaran may have challenged the Vellala supremacy but he was mainly supported by the Vellala dispersed community abroad, so called diaspora if one wants to use Biblical terms, and the west and it is unlikely that he was able to change much the culture of the Jaffna caste society. Though there may have been Thamil and Malayalam speaking immigrants there were no permanent settlements until the twelfth century and the Arya Chakravarthi kingdom cannot be considered as a Thamil kingdom. It has to be remembered that the Sinhala kings occasionally brought mercenaries or velakkaras from Chera and they were Malayalam speaking. In addition to that some others such as Magha has brought Malayalam speaking mercenaries and one should not ignore the Malayalam speaking population as well as the Sinhala Buddhists who were living in the Arya Chakravarthi kingdom when the Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka. It is the Dutch who brought the Vellalas notwithstanding the Slave trade carried on by the former though the re-search (not creative research) in this particular area remains incomplete. As the Vellala “influx” was very much more than the population in Jaffna at the time they were brought by the Dutch the present day Thamil culture commenced with the arrival of the Vellalas who absorbed the others to their culture and dominated the Jaffna population.
Subsequently the English speaking Vellalas were given privileges by the British and they became the leaders of the English speaking Ceylonese displacing the Burghers who were the original leaders of this community. The English speaking Vellalas were reluctant to do away with the privileges and tried to dominate the legislature through manoeuvres while hanging on to the professional dominance with the connivance of the British. With the introduction of universal franchise the English speaking Vellalas realised that they would lose their dominance in the legislature and connived with the British governors to hang on to the privileges. After “independence” Chelvanayakam realised that the English speaking Vellalas would not become leaders as the Sinhala MPs outnumbered the Thamil MPs and he founded his ITAK to establish a separate state in the northern and the eastern provinces. Later the myths such as Thamil homeland were added to justify the bogus claim for a separate state. Also any privilege that the English speaking Vellalas lost was presented as an injustice to the Thamil community in general. Chelvanayakam thus “Thamilised” the Vellala problem and was able to organise not only the Jaffna Thamils but the Eastern province Thamils as well as the Up country Thamils to fight on behalf of the Vellalas. Chelvanayakam was also able to organise the Muslims calling them Thamil speaking people following Ponnambalam Ramanathan who said he represented all the Thamil speaking people in the legislative assembly. Prabhakaran wanted only to expedite the process by taking up the arms provided by the Indians first and then by west.
However even while Chelvanayakam was living Ashraff separated from the alliance and so was Thondaman who had their own agenda. Later Karuna Amman formed his own group thus limiting Chelvanayakam politics to the northern province. Ashraff and later Thondaman made alliances with the governing parties discarding the Chelvanayakam - Prabhakaran politics. However after Ashraff, since recently, Hakeem leadership has limited its alliances to the UNP and the leader of the SLMC is fast becoming a Muslim Ranil. What I am trying to emphasise is that Chelvanayakam Prabhakaran politics is now confined to the northern province with Hakeem losing grip on Muslim politics in the eastern province as well as in the other parts of the country. The election results in various provincial councils and local government authorities show that in the northern province from Ananda Sangaree to Douglas Devananda are all engaged in some sort of devolutionary politics while politicians such as Karuna Amman openly say that power should not be devolved. The UPFA was able to win in the eastern province and of course in the other provinces because devolutionary politics have been defeated in those parts of the country. However, in the northern province the UPFA has effectively lost because devolutionary politics has not been defeated there. Devandas Ananda Sangarees who advocate devolution cannot defeat devolutionary politics and as a corollary cannot defeat Chelvanayakam – Prabhakaran politics. Those who argue that devolutionary politics is an answer to Chelvanayakam - Prabhakaran politics should realise that it is not so and UPFA headed by Devananda in Jaffna lost to ITAK simply because they had no alternative to offer to the people. The so called Thamil unity among the northern province Thamils, eastern province Thamils and the up country Thamils is not there now and it has lasted only for about three decades at most. The Muslims are also outside this orbit and the concept of Thamil speaking people is now redundant.
It is increasingly becoming clear that some people continue to help Chelvanayakam- Prabhakaran politics in spite of the government going out of way to serve some of the communities represented by them. While accepting that in the absence of alternative politics to devolutionary politics Chelvanayakam – Prabhakaran politics cannot be defeated one realises that a substantial number of those who remained with the LTTE leaders until the last days could be LTTE sympathisers if not cadres. Thus when NGOs and other such humanitarians in the west want the IDPs to be released immediately we could say that they want the LTTE sympathisers and cadres be released. Let the government take its time to release these people after screening them thoroughly without listening to these paid humanitarians. It is a difficult job and if possible the government should have released them without spending public funds to feed the IDPs. It should be reminded that these humanitarians were silent when the LTTE continued to harass the innocent people forgetting their humanitarian values. When Bishop Rayappu Joseph wants the government to release the IDPs it is clear that he wants his old friends in the LTTE to be released so that they could live another day to fight Sinhalathva. The new Archbishop probably thought that while customarily thanking the government for liberating Madhu enabling the Catholics to worship there in very large numbers after a lapse of about thirty years he had a duty by the so called humanitarianism to ask the government to release the IDPs, joining with Bishop Rayappu Joseph, the so called moderates Ananda Sangaree and others who help the LTTE indirectly without deviating from the devolutionary politics. We have experience of how some anti Sinhala Buddhist elements in the church have worked against Sinhalathva for five hundred years and we earnestly hope that the new Archbishop would not follow some of his predecessors.
Professor Nalin de Silva
In Vavuniyava the separatist party Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) meaning Lanka Thamil State Party that was founded in 1949 to establish a separate state in the northern and the eastern provinces which was later called the Thamil homeland or historical Thamil habitats a la Dixit has won the elections. This implies that Vavuniyava will get a chairman who would agitate for separatism, of course he would say if power is not devolved, but those who know the Chelvanayakam policy of “little now more later” would realise that these conditions are meaningless as far as the ITAK is concerned. In Jaffna the UPFA won the elections but the turn out was poor.
It is also clear that in Jaffna the electoral list does not reflect the adult population in that town. When it is said that turn out was less than 20% it could also mean that the number of registered voters is much more than the adult population of the area. When one considers the fact that some Muslim IDPs voted at the Jaffna elections electing four Muslim members to the Municipal council, it is clear that the UPFA has failed to attract the Jaffna Thamils in spite of the fact that the number of Thamils in Jaffna is not accurately represented by the number of voters. This phenomenon has to be understood by the UPFA more than anybody else as the future tactics would be determined by the interpretations of the present situations.
To understand the differences in voting patterns at the northern province elections and at the other provinces we should go back to the history of the Thamils and Thamil politics. Whatever is said by the historians it is now clear that what we have in Jaffna and the northern province is a Vellala dominated culture. Prabhakaran may have challenged the Vellala supremacy but he was mainly supported by the Vellala dispersed community abroad, so called diaspora if one wants to use Biblical terms, and the west and it is unlikely that he was able to change much the culture of the Jaffna caste society. Though there may have been Thamil and Malayalam speaking immigrants there were no permanent settlements until the twelfth century and the Arya Chakravarthi kingdom cannot be considered as a Thamil kingdom. It has to be remembered that the Sinhala kings occasionally brought mercenaries or velakkaras from Chera and they were Malayalam speaking. In addition to that some others such as Magha has brought Malayalam speaking mercenaries and one should not ignore the Malayalam speaking population as well as the Sinhala Buddhists who were living in the Arya Chakravarthi kingdom when the Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka. It is the Dutch who brought the Vellalas notwithstanding the Slave trade carried on by the former though the re-search (not creative research) in this particular area remains incomplete. As the Vellala “influx” was very much more than the population in Jaffna at the time they were brought by the Dutch the present day Thamil culture commenced with the arrival of the Vellalas who absorbed the others to their culture and dominated the Jaffna population.
Subsequently the English speaking Vellalas were given privileges by the British and they became the leaders of the English speaking Ceylonese displacing the Burghers who were the original leaders of this community. The English speaking Vellalas were reluctant to do away with the privileges and tried to dominate the legislature through manoeuvres while hanging on to the professional dominance with the connivance of the British. With the introduction of universal franchise the English speaking Vellalas realised that they would lose their dominance in the legislature and connived with the British governors to hang on to the privileges. After “independence” Chelvanayakam realised that the English speaking Vellalas would not become leaders as the Sinhala MPs outnumbered the Thamil MPs and he founded his ITAK to establish a separate state in the northern and the eastern provinces. Later the myths such as Thamil homeland were added to justify the bogus claim for a separate state. Also any privilege that the English speaking Vellalas lost was presented as an injustice to the Thamil community in general. Chelvanayakam thus “Thamilised” the Vellala problem and was able to organise not only the Jaffna Thamils but the Eastern province Thamils as well as the Up country Thamils to fight on behalf of the Vellalas. Chelvanayakam was also able to organise the Muslims calling them Thamil speaking people following Ponnambalam Ramanathan who said he represented all the Thamil speaking people in the legislative assembly. Prabhakaran wanted only to expedite the process by taking up the arms provided by the Indians first and then by west.
However even while Chelvanayakam was living Ashraff separated from the alliance and so was Thondaman who had their own agenda. Later Karuna Amman formed his own group thus limiting Chelvanayakam politics to the northern province. Ashraff and later Thondaman made alliances with the governing parties discarding the Chelvanayakam - Prabhakaran politics. However after Ashraff, since recently, Hakeem leadership has limited its alliances to the UNP and the leader of the SLMC is fast becoming a Muslim Ranil. What I am trying to emphasise is that Chelvanayakam Prabhakaran politics is now confined to the northern province with Hakeem losing grip on Muslim politics in the eastern province as well as in the other parts of the country. The election results in various provincial councils and local government authorities show that in the northern province from Ananda Sangaree to Douglas Devananda are all engaged in some sort of devolutionary politics while politicians such as Karuna Amman openly say that power should not be devolved. The UPFA was able to win in the eastern province and of course in the other provinces because devolutionary politics have been defeated in those parts of the country. However, in the northern province the UPFA has effectively lost because devolutionary politics has not been defeated there. Devandas Ananda Sangarees who advocate devolution cannot defeat devolutionary politics and as a corollary cannot defeat Chelvanayakam – Prabhakaran politics. Those who argue that devolutionary politics is an answer to Chelvanayakam - Prabhakaran politics should realise that it is not so and UPFA headed by Devananda in Jaffna lost to ITAK simply because they had no alternative to offer to the people. The so called Thamil unity among the northern province Thamils, eastern province Thamils and the up country Thamils is not there now and it has lasted only for about three decades at most. The Muslims are also outside this orbit and the concept of Thamil speaking people is now redundant.
It is increasingly becoming clear that some people continue to help Chelvanayakam- Prabhakaran politics in spite of the government going out of way to serve some of the communities represented by them. While accepting that in the absence of alternative politics to devolutionary politics Chelvanayakam – Prabhakaran politics cannot be defeated one realises that a substantial number of those who remained with the LTTE leaders until the last days could be LTTE sympathisers if not cadres. Thus when NGOs and other such humanitarians in the west want the IDPs to be released immediately we could say that they want the LTTE sympathisers and cadres be released. Let the government take its time to release these people after screening them thoroughly without listening to these paid humanitarians. It is a difficult job and if possible the government should have released them without spending public funds to feed the IDPs. It should be reminded that these humanitarians were silent when the LTTE continued to harass the innocent people forgetting their humanitarian values. When Bishop Rayappu Joseph wants the government to release the IDPs it is clear that he wants his old friends in the LTTE to be released so that they could live another day to fight Sinhalathva. The new Archbishop probably thought that while customarily thanking the government for liberating Madhu enabling the Catholics to worship there in very large numbers after a lapse of about thirty years he had a duty by the so called humanitarianism to ask the government to release the IDPs, joining with Bishop Rayappu Joseph, the so called moderates Ananda Sangaree and others who help the LTTE indirectly without deviating from the devolutionary politics. We have experience of how some anti Sinhala Buddhist elements in the church have worked against Sinhalathva for five hundred years and we earnestly hope that the new Archbishop would not follow some of his predecessors.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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