Of Cranky Letters and Political Knaves

by Sachi Sri Kantha

It seems that some kind of virus strain is turning Tamil politicians like Douglas Devananda and Veerasingham Anandasangaree into letter writers.  Early this year, it was revealed that Minister Devananda wrote 16 letters to the Sri Lankan Commissioner of Elections on the ‘irregularities’ he experienced as a candidate in Jaffna district during the April general elections.  Now, V.Anandasangaree has upped the ante by writing his ‘third’ letter to the LTTE leader, V.Pirabhakaran.

Anandasangaree’s ‘third letter’ received publicity in the Colombo press.  Among those scanned by me, the Sunday Observer (Oct.17th) featured the complete text, with a caption ‘Anandasangaree to V.Prabhakaran: Stop Playing the Same Old Record.’  The Daily Mirror (Oct.18th) even carried Sangaree’s soul into its editorial with an admonition to folks like me.  To quote, "Further edification, LTTE leader V.Prabhakaran and his followers should read carefully the letter the veteran Tamil leader V.Anandasangaree has written to him.  In this letter, the TULF leader brings out the futility of hanging on to outdated theories and concepts without making an effort to be realistic and practical."

Gee whiz – When I read the same letter, I couldn’t find such wisdom was oozing from the words of a fence-sitter who is in his political sunset phase.  Rather, what I found was a subtle spin by Sangaree prospecting for an official ‘Ambassador’ position, courtesy of Chandrika Kumaratunga or a future UNP administration.  His choice words speak for themselves. Here are some:

"The deaths of Singhalese and Muslim Youths are not small in number."

"I had been associated in Parliament with the top-most leaders of almost all political parties in Sri Lanka…"

On the ISGA proposals of LTTE: "Will the Muslims and the Singhalese agree to a set up like this and can any Government survive after conceding this demand….What about the Singhalese who left the North and also constitute one third of the population in the East.  The ISGE proposals in my view have aggravated our problems and have also diminished the hopes of early settlement."

"How do you expect the Singhalese, Muslims and Tamils to have faith in your Police and your courts?  Don’t you think that this move is to bring the entire North and East under the control and subjugation of the LTTE?  I do not think any member of the Singhala or Muslim or even the Tamil community will agree to these proposals.  What People want today is a Democratic Rule."

Anandasangaree must be in his clouds these days.  Last April, when Tamils in the Jaffna district voted in the general election, and when their votes turned against his favor, he castigated their intelligence.  The All Island Results, certified by the Commissioner of Elections, showed that the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi endorsed by the LTTE received 633,654 votes (6.84 percent of total votes cast in the election). Compared to this performance, Sangaree’s own Independent Party 1-Jaffna District received a puny 5,156 votes (0.06 percent of the total votes cast in the election).  And Sangaree has the nerve and temerity to criticise the LTTE’s ISGA proposals!

There is one sentence in the letter, which exposes Sangaree’s servility to his current and prospective Sinhalese Masters.  "Whatever we demand the concerned parties must be in a position to concede."  I cannot believe that Sangaree has not read anything about George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi and their campaigns for freedom in USA and India.

This is rather funny in that, Sangaree himself has claimed "seniority," in the belief that mere chronological ‘seniority’ automatically provides him an aura of stature.  To quote, "I am a very senior politician of Sri Lanka who had been in politics for nearly half a century…"  There are senior citizens who become demented with advancing age, but there are also senior citizens who still retain clear-headed thinking.  In his letter, Sangaree had aimed to claim an aura of stature by noting that he had moved with the two Tamil giants of an earlier era, namely S.J.V.Chelvanayakam and G.G.Ponnambalam.  To an extent true, but mixed with hyperbole.  Sangaree’s association with these two leaders was restricted to the ‘last decade’ (post 1965- early 1977) of both Chelvanayakam and Ponnambalam.  It should not be forgotten that Anandasangaree contested the 1965 election in Kilinochchi electorate as a representative of the Trotskyist party, and not as a Tamil Congress nominee.  When Sangaree was elected for the first time to Parliament in the Tamil Congress ticket in 1970, G.G.Ponnambalam was not there.  Ponnambalam was defeated in 1970.  And Sangaree’s ‘purported relationship’ with Chelvanayakam should have been tenuous at best.  Chelvanayakam was out of the 7th parliament, from October 1972 to February 1975, having resigned his Kankesanthurai seat voluntarily.  Sangaree seems to have conveniently forgotten that it was Chelvanayakam who placed the demand for a separate Tamil Eelam in the February 1975 by-election and received an overwhelming mandate from the Tamil voters. 

V. Navaratnam (in spectacles) and colleagues volunteering as Eelam postal workers during 1961 satyagraha. Source: Federal Party Silver Jubilee Souvenir (1974)

If there is one political leader (who is still amongst us) who had associated with both Ponnambalam and Chelvanayakam during the peak of their respective political careers, it is none other than V.Navaratnam, one time MP for Kayts (from 1963 to 1970).  Born in 1910 October 18, Navaratnam is 22 years older Ananthasangaree, born in 1933 June 15; and even after reaching 94 years, Navaratnam still possesses a clear head – as evinced from his opinion piece published in the Colombo Daily Mirror two weeks ago.  Navaratnam was a visionary, who rebelled against both his political mentors, G.G.Ponnambalam (in 1948) and S.J.V.Chelvanayakam (in 1968); but partly because of the greater aura of his two mentors, he couldn’t attract popular support to his cause at the general elections in 1952, 1970 and 1977.

Now to the first sentence of Sangaree’s ‘third letter.’  Sangaree began his letter, dated 12 October 2004, as follows: "My Dear Thamby, I hope this letter will not surprise you.  This is the third letter I am writing to you, although you had not replied to my earlier two letters."

I’m not sure whether I have read Sangaree’s previous two letters.  I have no reasons to complain on this, since if letters are meant to be private, I couldn’t have seen them, unless of course the concerned parties had brought them to my attention.  Were these two previous letters also released to the press by Sangaree, like this third one?  If Sangaree has got into the habit of releasing private letters to the press, then he has no case to complain about LTTE leader’s surly behavior of not replying "to my earlier two letters."

Another thing which irks me is the language of this ‘third letter.’  Since both Sangaree and Pirabhakaran are Tamils, one would have expected that, logically speaking, Sangaree would write his letter to Pirabha in Tamil, and not in English.  Did Sangaree send the Tamil original to the LTTE leader, and prepared an English translation of such for press release?  Or is it that the Tamil original doesn’t exist, and Sangaree prepared this ‘third letter’ with the sole purpose of his self promotion?  He has to clarify this to the Tamil public at the earliest.