Photo: Contributor/IRINHIGHLIGHTS
- Tamil National Alliance to challenge power limits
- Governor holds power in new provincial council
- Looking to diaspora as way to bypass government
- Jobs trump power as basic need
ODDUSSUDDAN, 7 October 2013 (IRIN) – Nearly two weeks after the Tamil National Alliance’s (TNA) resounding victory in a local election in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, analysts and voters are debating what the party will be able to achieve as the province recovers from more than two decades of a brutal civil war.
By the end of polling on 21 September, 67 percent of 719,000 eligible voters had cast their votes in the north’s first provincial election – long-awaited by international donors and local political activists – since fighting ended in 2009.
The TNA, the party with the largest representation of the ethnic Tamil minority in parliament, won 30 out of the 38 seats on the Northern Provincial Council; the governing United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) secured seven. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress won one seat.
The TNA campaigned for more political autonomy for the north, while the UPFA appealed to voters with its massive development campaign for the province. The region was devastated during two and half decades of sectarian violence that followed demands by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels for a separate Tamil state.
Frustrating decades-long yearnings for some degree of autonomy carries certainsecurity risks.
Despite its overwhelming victory, the TNA will dominate a council that is largely impotent under the control of the provincial governor, who is appointed by the president. According to the 13th constitutional amendment that established the provincial councils in 1987, the governor is the only official with executive powers, including control of provincial spending.
Top TNA leader Rajavarotiam Sampanthan has criticized the governors of the Northern and Eastern provinces as “laws unto themselves”, accusing them of deciding on provincial affairs without consulting locally elected representatives.
Power, but to whom?
Even before the election, few analysts saw a TNA-led provincial administration as a substantive devolution of power.
“The general view of voters is that …the Northern Provincial Council will have no autonomy, with the chief minister [the council’s top elected official] serving as a messenger of the governor, who in turn is the messenger of the president,” said a pre-election report released by the national election monitoring body theCentre for Monitoring Election Violence on 20 September.
But any path to power needs its starting point, say TNA leaders.
“The election is a means to work towards meaningful power devolution,” said TNA parliamentarian Abraham Sumanthiran.
According to Jehan Perera, executive director of the Colombo-based National Peace Council, despite the constitutional imbroglio, the newly elected council may play a decisive role in northern politics and development.
“Right now the discussions are taking place at the parliament or at donor-level, but the provincial council has the potential to become the best forum for discussion and possibly decision-making on provincial affairs. Its immediacy to the province can make the process faster as well as better informed,” he said.
The largely top-down process of managing the north now means issues are not addressed quickly, with information filtering through several layers of bureaucracy in multiple departments, Perera said.
However, he added that the TNA-led council needs to be mindful to not allow political demands to overshadow basic needs, like employment. “It [the council] would have to strike a delicate balance.”
The TNA has said it will use its victory to enforce hitherto ignored provisions of the13th amendment, which give control of policing and local economic planning to provincial councils.
In addition TNA leaders have said they will push to expand provincial powers. But in order to do that, they would need to repeal the 13th amendment and support a new amendment.
India
But scrapping the amendment and replacing it with one that grants provincial councils more authority is unlikely, according to analysts in neighbouring India, which helped broker the amendment that created the councils through the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord.
The accord set up provincial councils as a way for the state to share power with the north; a long standing grievance of minority Tamil parties has been that power is concentrated at the national level, marginalizing ethnic minorities. Over 90 percent of the voters in the north are Tamil, Sri Lanka’s second largest ethnic group.
India has strong interest in the situation due to ethnic ties between Tamils living in India – where they form close to 6 percent of the population – and Tamils in Sri Lanka. ButRamani Hariharan, who was head of intelligence for the Indian peacekeeping force based in north and east Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990, told IRIN that though India took on Colombo to advocate for Sri Lankan Tamils last time, it is unlikely to do so now.
“It comes at an inconvenient time for India,” he said, noting that, with national elections to be held in 2014, India is less willing to risk potential humiliation if Colombo does not agree to expand provincial powers.
Analysts also predict that India will not want to call attention to dissatisfaction with the current amendment so that its role in negotiating power sharing is regarded as an accomplishment.
Power struggle?
The TNA has also indicated it will try to raise development funds outside of Sri Lanka, particularly from the global Tamil diaspora – estimated to be some 700,000 people, mostly concentrated in Canada, the UK and the rest of the European Union – to invest directly in the province, without going through the national government.
But since 2009, when the government created the Presidential Task Force (PTF), the state has controlled all humanitarian and development activities in the north.
“Mainly the Task Force is…to coordinate activities of the security agencies of the Government in support of resettlement, rehabilitation and development, and to liaise with all organizations in the public and private sectors and civil society organizations for the proper implementation of programs and projects,” said a government announcement.
Run by the Defence Ministry, PTF approves all humanitarian and reconstruction work in the north.
However, according to national human rights activist, Ruki Fernando, since no “clear law” created or sanctioned the task force, “it would not be illegal for anyone to bypass that body”, setting the stage for a potential power struggle over who controls humanitarian and development work in the north.
Priority setting
Pushing political demands aside, Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, who heads Point Pedro Institute of Development, based in northern Jaffna, advised the newly elected council to focus on jobs by developing the region’s agriculture and fisheries sectors, the main sources of income for northern residents.
“Raising the voice for more devolution should be a low priority for the newly formed Northern Provincial Council. It is not only the central government but the provincial government as well that should get its priorities right. People are more interested in livelihoods and day-to-day issues.”
The Central Bank estimates the government has invested more than US$3 billion in infrastructure since the end of the war; critics say this multi-billion dollar development has largely been out of step with residents’ needs.
Sarvananthan said that while there is urgent demand for jobs, the government’s main focus has been almost exclusively on highway development and boosting power supply to main towns.
“When the northern people were asking for bread, [the Mahinda] Rajapaksa government offered them cake,” he told IRIN.
“Big roads are ok, but we need money to take the bus or to buy a motorcycle to ride on them,” said 21-year-old first-time voter Nishanthan, who goes by one name, from the village of Oddusuddan in the north’s Mullaittivu District
Kumaravadivel Guruparan, a lecturer in the Department of Law at the University of Jaffna, said the vote was a signal of deep-rooted disappointment with state policies.
Despite massive infrastructural repair and the recent extension of train service to the north for the first time in 24 years, voters were expressing their discontent, Guruparan explained, with the state’s continued military presence in the province.
But then there are the 82,000 residents who voted for the ruling party, like Ramalingam Sudhaharan from Dharamapuram, a village in Kilinochchi District, who said that, given the post-war devastation, what has been achieved in the last four years has been “remarkable”.
“We have good roads for the first time in my life, a very good hospital in Kilinochchi [town], new power stations. Jobs [are] the next logical step, and they will come with time,” he added.
Meanwhile, Sarvananthan from Point Pedro Institute said told IRIN via email that even with limited powers the council can still create change, for example, by passing an equal opportunities law to benefit the estimated more than 40,000female-headed households in the province.
“Northern Provincial Council could show the central government the correct [and] genuine path to reconciliation in lieu of building a sports stadium to international standards or constructing eight-lane highways (four lanes in each direction) in [Mullaittivu] District where [the] cattle population outnumbers human population,” he said.
contributor/pt/rz
Tamils during the last 30 odd years faced indescribable tragedies, failures and setbacks. Despite all these obstacles the Tamil people living in the North bravely and courageously expressed their will and desire and determination at the recent election. All believed that this time the Tamils would be submissive to the pressures from the South and change their stand and determination and will be prepared to surrender. Many even said that what is expressed in the North is really the voice of the Diaspora and not that of the local Tamil people. Based on this premise only Douglas and Rajapaksa combine plunged into this Provincial Election. Of course there were immense international pressures too for this election. Once the election was over, people from both sides of the divide were surprised at the outcome and once again there was praise for the great courage and determination of the Northern Tamils. Yarl Devi reaching Kilinochchi and Power Supply to the North and rubberised roads to some parts of the North did not make the local Tamils to change their stand and faith.
After the recent election all believed that a new dawn is in sight and Tamils are going to be a different breed altogether, with new ideas and new unity. Ordinary people believed that Douglas, Karuna, KP, Daya Master and few such turncoats are an exception only and they don’t really represent the Tamil psyche. But what is happening right now once again reminds us that some of the Tamil politicians have not changed at all and they are in no way different to the Southern politicians. Their cravings once again are only for positions, portfolios and Pajeros and not the will of the Tamil people who rightly or wrongly placed their faiths in the hands of these people while exposing themselves to great dangers.
If this is going to be so, then do the Tamils or their Tamil politicians have any moral right at all to blame Douglas or Karuna or KP or Daya Master for joining the Sinhala Team where collosal benefits awaiting them? I suggest that the recently elected Tamil politicians who are for petty and selfish reasons opposing the present proceeding to quit and to join Douglas or Karuna and then to serve themselves. It is Tamils’ curse that we always have traitors at the right time and at the right place to ruin our cause.
This is why many suggested that the greatest mistake Sinhala leaders made was for not giving Eelam or whatever to the Tamils and within no time they will destroy themselves and go back to the Sinhala masters with their tails tucked between their legs for redemption. I consider the guys who oppose the will of the Tamil people and exposing our weakness and refusing to learn a lesson even after all these calamities as the real Tamil traitors.