Encountering political reality, at last! - Editorial

Further to what we said about the first would be Chief Minister of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC), needless to say that an optimist would see the results of the NPC election as a golden opportunity for the government and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to work together towards national reconciliation, while a pessimist would predict otherwise.





It is so because both parties now have to act on the same issues and problems as they are now stakeholders of an administrative set-up, and neither party can distance itself from those issues for reasons real or imaginary, as the TNA did in respect of the Parliamentary  Select Committee (PSC) on the national question.

There had been media reports quoting government bigwigs as saying during the NPC election campaign that ended last week that funds for the NPC would not be released in the event of the TNA grabbing the reins of the Council, an unethical psychological pressure exerted on the voter which was also practised by the UNP during its tenure at provincial election campaigns.

However, if the government accepts the present devolution mechanism, it also has to be reminded that the concept of devolution is theoretically meant to discourage secessionist tendencies by way of conferring a certain degree of power to the peripheral communities with parting inclinations and not to the ruling parties of the centre.
Hence it would not be prudent for a responsible government to scuttle the smooth functioning of the NPC, unless the provincial administrators cross the legendary “Lakshmana Rekha.”

 On the other hand, if the government did not accept the power devolution, it shouldn’t have held the elections for the PCs in the first place.

The emotionally-charged recent ITAK/TNA election campaign brought the reminiscences of the 1977 Parliamentary election which officially sealed the TULF’s Vaddukkoddai call for a separate State, to the fore, with a controversial election manifesto.

Now that the election is over with the ITAK bagging more than two thirds of the votes and seats, the party is prone to be pressurised not only by a section of its own constituency but also by the Tamil Diaspora and the Tamil Nadu leaders to go ahead with its highly ambitious demand for more devolution.

It is pertinent for the ITAK/TNA also to be reminded that the concept of power devolution represents a vast region having the unitary form of governance at one end and the secessionism at the other. Therefore, pursuing “more” devolution without a clearly defined and declared target but with double-edged political terms would take the TNA nowhere, while driving the youth again along the once trodden dangerous path. It would be dangerous for the TNA as well, as history has proven.

One must also be reminded of the very words that TNA leader R. Sampanthan used at the 14th convention of the ITAK that was held in Batticaloa in May last year on Indian intervention. Here are two separate sentences from that speech which speak volumes. “ The intervention of India has clearly taught us the lesson that whatever our aspirations may be, India will never welcome a political solution in Sri Lanka that does not accord with the interests of India…. We must not forget the lesson history taught us, of the difference of opinion we had with India that not only caused it to distance itself from us for the past 20 years, but even caused it to work against us.”  
Yes, India will never condone any wrong message that would be sent across the Palk Strait to Tamil Nadu. That was the geo-political reality that Prabhakaran did not realise.

If both the government and the TNA understand these limitations, the victory of TNA at Saturday’s NPC election would surely be a window for the much-needed political reconciliation.