It is said that the Tamil National
Alliance (TNA) is getting ready to remove the name of Ananda Sangari from its
membership list. It is true that Ananda Sangari did not poll enough
preferential votes at the Northern Province Provincial Council elections to be
elected as a member of the provincial council. The TNA received more than
seventy percent of the vote of the people in the province, and it was clear
that they voted under instructions from the dispersed Tamils who now reside in
the western countries. We have come to a stage where the politics in the
Northern Province are increasingly being manipulated by the western countries through
the displaced Tamils in those countries. It is a case of western countries
maintaining the dispersed Tamils and the latter maintaining their relatives in
the province through money sent to them.
It is said that a last minute campaign
through SMS, telephone calls etc., was conducted by the dispersed Tamils to
make the voters in the Northern Province go to the polling booths and from all
accounts it can be inferred that the latter were asked to vote for the TNA with
preferential vote for those candidates who are sympathetic to the LTTE. The
people elected Anandi, the wife of an LTTE terrorist leader with the second
largest preferential vote after Wigneshwaran and rejected Ananda Sangari who is
not sympathetic to the LTTE.
It appears that there are at least two
groups within the TNA. The first faction is the party of the Eelamist dispersed
Tamils in the western countries and the second faction is that led by
Sampanthan. This latter group has the blessings of India and had their support
as well, but it has to compete with the faction of the Eelamist dispersed
Tamils. It also appears that the Colombo based Tamils who are not with the UNP,
support mainly the Sampanthan faction, while the Tamils in the other areas of
the country are generally with the SLFP led UPFA. However, as far as the
Northern Province is concerned the vote is being manipulated by the dispersed
Tamils that do not belong to the group
of elite Tamils in the country. The elite Tamils support either the UNP or the
Sampanthan faction and those who are sympathetic to the latter faction in
general are more Hindu oriented than Christian oriented.
The dispersed Tamils in the western
countries are not from the elite families and are products of free education.
There is this difference between the Tamil leadership of the Tamil Congress for
example and the present leadership. The leaders such as G G Ponnambalam and
those who preceded him came from the elite families but after the introduction
of free education and after Chelvanayakam the leadership changed from the elite
to the educated non elite. It is the non elite free educated that give
leadership to the dispersed Tamils who in turn lead the Tamils in the Northern
Province. Sampanthan with the support of the Indians would like to go back to
the days of the elite with Wigneshwaran but it is clear that he has a problem
at hand.
The western countries also would like
the elite but the non elite free educated in the west would not allow it to
happen. The west, especially England does not mind that, as their main
objective is to teach the Sinhala people a lesson for all that the latter did
and do against the English colonial power. Prabhakaran has for all purposes
made an irreversible change in the Jaffna society and it is the dispersed
Tamils with the support of England, which calls the shots.
The dispersed free educated Tamils who
were educated mostly at the expense of the Sinhala people since the latter as
the majority would have contributed more to the public purse that spent money
for free education among other such social welfare measures have displaced the
elite Tamils and it appears that Sampanthan is fighting a losing battle. However,
he is determined to fight back and the present shouting of slogans by various
sectors has to be considered in this background.
Since the provincial council elections
for the Northern Province, the Tamil politics have gone back to the days of the
Vadukkodai resolution and the Indo Lanka agreement that is not valid either
legally or politically. There is familiar talk against the National Flag,
National Anthem in addition to attempts to celebrate the so called mahivir day
at various places in the northern province. Even the Catholic Church that has
Bishops such as Rayappu Joseph who did not make statements because of fear of
Prabhakaran now talks again of traditional habitats of the Tamils. One may try
to split hairs by telling that traditional habitats are not the same as
homeland, but the net political result is the same whatever the term used. The
infamous Indo Lanka agreement that was forced on us by the Gandhi dynasty and
the Indian Brahmins also referred to the Northern Province and the Eastern
Province as the habitats of the Tamils ignoring the fact that these provinces
were demarcated by the English as late as 1889. The Catholic Church echoing
Wigneshwaran and the others want the removal of the governor of the Northern
Province on the grounds that the latter was an ex army officer.
The Tamil leadership and others who echo
these slogans have gained a new life after the visit of David Cameron who threw
the usual English sophisticated but bogus manners out of the window, and
behaved exposing his true character as an English Prime Minister. It is the
anti Sinhala attitude, especially the anti Sinhala Buddhist attitude that was
exhibited nakedly by David Cameron and the Sinhala people should be thankful to
him for being not sophisticated. The English are not democrats at all and they
cover their autocracy by bogus sophisticated mannerisms.
Sampanthan and Wigneshwaran as long as
the Tamil politics in the Northern Province are determined by the dispersed
Tamils and the western countries led by England, have to compete with TNA
leaders such as Premachandran, Sritharan and Anandi to name only a few. It is a
pity to see Wigneshwaran competing with Anandi but it is politics whether one
likes it or not. India is not in a position to help them as the Indian Prime
Minister by not attending the CHOGAM has abdicated the role of India in Sri
Lankan Tamil politics. Jayalalitha is only an inflated figure who has no
authority outside Tamil Nadu. Her talk of becoming the Prime Minister of India
is nothing but wishful thinking of an aging actress.
There have been ex army officers who were
acceptable to the Tamil leaders as the governors of the Northern and Eastern
Provinces from the days of Vartharajaperumal and it is nothing but
opportunistic politics of the TNA leaders who supported the candidature of the
commander of the army, Sarath Fonseka to the post of President of the country
objecting to the present governor of the Northern Province merely because the
latter had functioned as an officer in the army. Even Vartharajaperumal hoisted
the national flag when he was the Chief Minister of the combined Northern and
eastern Provinces and we all know that India was behind him. The present
objections to the national flag stems from Eelam politics of the dispersed
Tamils who are being used by England, and Sampanthan and Wigneshwaran who would
not receive much support from India have to readjust their politics to the
whims and fancies of the dispersed Tamils. Wigneshwaran will have to attempt to
visit high security zones in order to make news in his competition with Anandi.
However, the irony is that whether they adjust or not they would soon find themselves
in the same boat as Ananda Sangari, and their best bet would be to corporate
with the government and work for the welfare of the Tamils in the Northern Province
and cut the umbilical cord that attach the latter to the dispersed Tamils in
the west.
Nalin De Silva
25-12-2013