Lankan Tamils face Hobson's choice, says leading journalist

The Tamils of Sri Lanka are presented with a Hobson's choice in the upcoming presidential election, but vote they must, a leading Tamil journalist has said.

Mr N Vithyatharan, editor of Tamil dailies Uthayan and Sudaroli published from Jaffna and Colombo respectively, feels they have to choose between President Rajapaksa who ordered the shooting and Gen (Retd) Sarath Fonseka who pulled the gun.

In an interview to Rabi Bernard of Jaya Plus news channel, Mr Vithyatharan said however difficult the choice might be, boycott was not an option for the Tamils. It was LTTE leader Prabhakaran's call for the boycott of the November 2005 elections which led to the present situation, he said in an obvious reference to Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa narrowly defeating his UNP rival Ranil Wickremesinghe who signed the ceasefire agreement with the Tigers.

He said "since the boycott of 2005 led to the present situation, the Tamils may be forced to choose not on the basis of who can do more good to them but who can do the least harm to them".

He pointed to severe difficulties in taking a decision. For example, President Rajapaksa enjoyed Parliament support and to that extent had untrammeled powers. On the other hand, Gen Fonseka though supported by the opposition United National Party and the JVP, would have to depend on Parliament "even to serve tea to visitors, if he is elected President".

If the Tamils supported a weak executive President, what was the guarantee that he would be able to keep whatever promises he made to them to get their votes, he asked.

On the ethnic question too, there was little to choose between the two as "both are against Tamils".

Mr Rajapaksa "is against the very concept of Tamil nationalism and is out to obliterate it through extension of Sinhala colonization of Tamil land, already successfully carried out in the east, to the Tamil heartland of north". On the other hand, Gen Fonseka had gone on record that" Sri Lanka belongs to Sinhalese and Tamils should live on their terms".

In this connection, he recalled the four principles enunciated not just by the LTTE but all Tamil parties, including the TULF at Thimpu in 1985--namely recognition of Tamils as a distinct nationality, recognition of north and east as their traditional homeland, recognition of Tamils’ right to self-determination and recognition of voting rights to plantation Tamils of Indian origin.

He said of the four, the Sri Lankan regime implemented only the last principle first. The 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka agreement recognized the homeland concept by calling the north and east as places of historic habitation of Tamils and provided for temporary merger of the east with the north.

Even the third principle of self-determination for Tamils was recognized in the Oslo declaration when Colombo agreed to give them internal self-determination.

Now, President Mahinda Rajapaksa was planning to hand down victor's justice by seeking to obliterate the very concept of Tamil nationalism and identity.

In this connection, he referred to the President's statement after the war that Sri Lankans should forge a new national identity and everyone should be free to settle anywhere.

Mr Vithyatharan said that as part of the move to colonize the north, the President had set up a 12-member committee to review a centuries old Jaffna act prohibiting alienation of land in the peninsula by outsiders, somewhat akin to the law prevailing in the Kashmir valley to preserve its distinct identity. The committee was packed with Sinhalese.

Likewise, palmyrah was an integral part of Jaffna Tamil culture. Yet, in the committee set up for the development of palmyrah destroyed in the decades long war, there were only two Tamils against ten Sinhalese who had never set foot in Jaffna and who knew nothing about Jaffna culture.

Having stared to systematically to change the demographic pattern of the north after successfully altering it in the north, would President Rajapaksa agree to re-merger of the east delinked from the north after a recent Supreme Court judgment, Mr Vithyatharan asked.

He said as part of his strategy, President Rajapaksa had succeeded in driving a wedge in the Tamil National Alliance by encouraging the candidature of Mr M.K.Sivajilingham. "The message is clear. If you don't play ball, I shall split the TNA much the same way I split the UNP and the JVP".

Turning to Gen Fonseka, he said there was a myth that the executive President was all-powerful. History had shown that the President who had no majority in Parliament was toothless; he said and recalled how Mr Wickremesinghe presented President Chandrika Kumaratunga with a fait accompli after signing a ceasefire agreement in February 2002 with the Tigers upon his election as Prime Minister.

He said though the general was backed by the UNP and the JVP, he had no independent support of his own in Parliament. In other words, should he win, he could not take the support of even the UNP and the JVP for granted, let alone the SLFP. Would such a President serve Tamils' interests, he asked.

While Gen Fonseka was asserting that Sri Lanka belonged to Sinhalese, President Rajapaksa was refusing to even admit there was a minority problem and had gone on record that in post-war Sri Lanka, there would no minorities and majorities, only Sri Lankans.

Mr Vithyatharan, who was picked up by a white van in Colombo at the height of the war last April-May "to suppress news of civilian killings being brought to world attention", said he was detained and tortured in military custody.

He said the Tamils had great expectations from Tamil Nadu and India and were pained and disappointed when India refused to intervene to stop civilian killings. Even more shocking was India joining hands with China to block a UN probe into human rights violations by the Sri Lankan army, he said.

Mr Vithyatharan said, in reply to a question on what stand India should take in the presidential election, that New Delhi seemed to fear that if an army man was elected to a powerful post and yet prevented from exercising the powers, he might be tempted to stage a coup as Gen Musharaff had done in Pakistan. "The Tamils, used to the military rule, are not unduly worried about a coup", he said bitterly.

Mr Vithyatharan said India should worry about China's increasing influence in Sri Lankan affairs. It had bagged the Hambantota port development contract. On the Palai-Kankesanthurai road development project, India got only a slice of one km at the rate of two lakh dollars whereas China had got a major chunk of the work and would be paid four lakh US dollars. On top of it, China would be allowed to bring in 20,000 of its nationals to the peninsula; at great cost to its culture, and 40 per cent of them would be convicts who would be used as cheap labour.

In conclusion, he said with the Sinhalese more or less evenly divided, with even those who might otherwise back President Rajapaksa put off by the excesses of his brothers, the Tamils vote would prove crucial.

A historic duty was cast upon Tamil National Alliance leader R Sampanthan, who was negotiating with both the candidates, to take the Tamils in the right direction.
It was also necessary for consolidation of Tamil political might now that the armed struggle had come to an end, he said.

- Asian Tribune -