Ball Back Again in TNA’s Court

(N. Sathiyamoorthy)

By declaring that they would be willing to consider working with the multi-member Tamil Parties Forum, the TNA may have moved a notch closer to reality than earlier. However, by adding that they would want the TPF should come out public on what all they have discussed so far other than the Tamil national Alliance, the latter may have also given expression to the kind of diffidence that has guided its course in the past year after the war.

Clearly, the TNA seems to feel out-numbered, if not out-numbed as yet, by the turn of events. The ‘credibility gap’ of its Tamil rivals about which the TNA has been talking for long may not be saleable for too long if the Alliance is unable to show results. In the East, where it shunned Provincial Council elections at the behest of the LTTE, the ground may have slipped from under its feet.

 The parliamentary polls may have had an encouraging message for the TNA in the Province but overall, it was not encouraging to the Tamil community and polity, per se. The results, as with the Provincial Council polls, were relatively more favourable to the Tamil-speaking Muslim polity. It could be more so if and when they resolve their own internal differences, which again are based on personality issues and may have nothing to do with ideological issues or policy considerations.

 This is not to suggest that unity among the Muslim parties should not be welcome, or would become a threat to the ‘Sri Lankan Tamil polity’, particularly in the East. If anything, any TNA move to identify with a larger Tamil political grouping would only encourage the Muslim polity in the country, too, to work out similar methodologies. It could sound a negative approach to begin with, but its results could be positive, overall and over time.

 The ‘Sri Lankan Tamil’ polity, particularly the TNA, cannot live in the past and seek to submerge, if not subdue the Muslim polity. To the extent the SLMC has reiterated its desire to work with the TNA and also within a re-merged North-East, there is some hope left. However, like the TNA, the SLMC too should be alive to the existence of other sections of the polity from within the community and should make every effort to carry them with it. The initiative for a consensus within the community should again come from the SLMC.

 There are signs of the Upcountry Tamil polity coming together to work on specific issues of common concern to the divided polity in the community.  The Sri Lankan Tamil political parties began to work as single and singular entities to begin with and have come together from time to time in pursuit of a common cause, personality clashes often defined ideological divides for them to go back to their own ways. It’s no different in the case of the Muslims and Upcountry Tamils, as well.

The TNA is in a better position to any other to take the lead, as it could trigger a process that could witness greater coordination and cooperation among the divided polities of denominational Tamil groups in the country. The longer it takes to consolidate its views, as the moderate leadership of the Tamil polity has always done in the past, greater are the chances of the TNA getting sidelined.

Numbers that are now the TNA’s strength could then become a burden – not just in Parliament but even among the membership of the Alliance. Already, the Alliance is speaking in different voices on almost every issue and almost at every turn. It is also possibly this, combined with the unwillingness of the respective leaderships from within the Alliance partners that may be at the root of the TNA not being able to set up grassroots-level organizations in the past year after the war.

Today, the TNA may be threatened with the possibility of the ‘credibility’ card becoming unsold if a moderate leader like S C Chandrahasan were to take the Tamil Parties Forum seriously. He is being seen in the company of other leaders of the Forum in what is turning out to be a regular meeting of theirs. Sooner than later the Forum will have to show up a road-map, as demanded by the TNA, if it has to sound serious. If they could act imaginatively on that front, and also capture the imagination of the Sri Lankan Tamil community, particularly in the North, then they may not need the TNA, either. The TNA has nothing to lose from joining hands with the other parties of the Tamil-speaking people. They add numbers and value to the voice of the Tamil-speaking people, as the Government approaches constitutional reforms in the company of the rest of the Sinhala polity, particularly the UNP Opposition. It had hedged President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s invitation for talks for long, both when the LTTE was around and otherwise, but is now on board, anyway.

For the TNA to expect that the talks should always be one-sided and meet their demands without they not wanting to give any commitments or share responsibilities from their side is not what negotiations are all about. Their failure to gauge the outcome of the presidential polls – and truly believing that Sarath Fonseka would actually win – was yet another historic blunder in true LTTE form (a la 2004 presidential polls).

Nor can the TNA, or other sections of the Tamil polity expect the Government to rehabilitate arrested Tamil youth, LTTE or not, and not wanting to have any truck with the ‘already rehabilitated’ groups like those under Karuna, Pillaiyan and now ‘KP’. They cannot dictate the Government or individuals as to who should be rehabilitated and how.

 Karuna, having joined the SLFP already, may have ruled himself out, but then like other Tamil party leaders now in Government, his contribution need not be shunted, outright. Pillaiyan already is Chief Minister of the East. ‘KP’ is believed to have the potential to bring back Diaspora donations and LTTE funds for the development of the war-ravaged North and the East, the kind of money that the Government cannot be expected to mobilize, even it was willing. Accepting them as political colleagues may be another thing, but even then they need not be fastidiously blind.