Last week, the Tamil National Alliance team that went to India returned, having failed to secure an appointment with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Suresh Premachandran was also in India, but he did not accompany the TNA delegation comprising of R.Sambandan, Mavai Senathirajah, Selvam Adaikalanathan, and Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam to New Delhi. Even though the TNA team failed to meet the prime minister, they had met the Indian foreign minister, foreign secretary, defense advisor and also the opposition leader.

At all these meetings, the TNA had stressed two main points: The need to immediately resettle the IDPs, and to formulate an acceptable devolution package. They had said that there were thousands among the IDPs who were from the Jaffna peninsula, and these people could be sent back to their homes first. Then there were people from villages which were basically land mine free because these villages had been occupied until the last moment. Another complaint that the TNA made to the Indians they met was that the Sri Lankan government has not yet put forward a devolution package for discussion.

There is a strand of thought emerging within the TNA that it is futile trying to put pressure on the Indians to get things for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. It is unlikely that any Indian central government, be it Congress or BJP led, will encourage a situation vis-a-vis Tamil Nadu and northern Sri Lanka analogous to the situation in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan and Afghanistan. There cross border tribal loyalties have rendered both countries ungovernable with terrorists using the territory of one country to disrupt life in the other.

Ties between the Tamils of northern Sri Lankan and the people of Tamil Nadu have never been as close as the tribal cross border loyalties between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the Indian central governments would want that to remain that way. After the LTTE’s nearly three decades of trying to cajole, blackmail and even terrorize foreign governments into supporting the Tamil bid for independence, it will take time for old practices to die a natural death. Some members of the TNA feel that it would be more fruitful now to talk to the Sri Lankan government as during the days of President Premadasa, than to look outwards for help.

Talking instead of shouting

Last week the TNA was given a demonstration of the potential of this new approach. The TNA is constituted of four different political parties, the TULF, Tamil Congress, TELO and EPRLF and sometimes coordination among the various constituent parties may not be what it should be. Last week, parliamentarian Mavai Senathirajah wanted to go to Vavuniya to finalize nominations for the local government elections, and he was initially refused permission to travel on the grounds that the situation in Vavuniya was not conducive for politicians of the TNA to travel about freely. One part of the TNA raised a howl that Senathirajah had been denied permission to travel to Vavuniya and the present columnist was told last morning (Saturday) that Senathirajah had to go to Anuradhapura and get down the TNA candidates from Vavuniya and finalize the nominations list in Anuradhapura. It was urged that this was not democracy and that the government was not conceding the TNA the right to engage in politics. While one part of the TNA was thus in a ‘protest and demonstration’ mode, Senathirajah himself had spoken to the elections commissioner in his capacity as the general secretary of the TNA, and presented his case - that as the general secretary of the party, he had to be present in Vavuniya. The very next day, Senathirajah had got the required permission to travel to Vavuniya.

When this columnist contacted Senathirajah on Saturday, he was in Jaffna attending to the Jaffna nominations. Talking, instead of shouting and protesting had produced results. It may take some time for the TNA which was constantly in the protest mode when the LTTE was calling the shots to get the hang of the less stressful but more effective way of getting things done by simply talking!

The earlier practice of giving primacy to protest, has hamstrung the TNA because they never participated in the deliberations of the APRC despite repeated efforts by the infinitely long-suffering minister Tissa Vitarana to get them involved. So today, when they go to New Delhi and complain to the Indians that the government has not put forward a devolution package, the question that they would be asked, is "What have you done to help the All Party Conference to come up with a proposal?" Having deliberately kept away from efforts to find middle ground, they can’t reasonably expect the Indian government to take their complaint about the lack of a devolution package seriously. Some change in long established habits and practices in the TNA will be called for in the new situation.

It is obvious that some changes are taking place within the TNA by the way they reacted to the formation of a transnational Tamil government by some elements associated with the overseas branches of the LTTE. The first to react was MP N.Srikantha who told this columnist in a yet unpublished interview that he rejects this so called transnational government outright and that the only people who have the right to represent the Tamils are those here on the ground. Suresh Premachandran, fresh from his trip to India, said as much – the so-called trans-national government has nothing to do with the TNA and that he does not know who is involved. He had never heard of anything called a ‘trans-national government’ anywhere else in the world and that he disowns it. Mavai Senathirajah said that he does not understand how such a trans-national government can be viable and he said that the TNA has nothing to do with it.

What seems remarkable is that nobody involved with this so called transnational government had felt obliged to consult the TNA before making the formation of this ‘government in exile’ public. Since this was formed by overseas branches of the LTTE, it may be the case that they expected the same unquestioning allegiance of the TNA that they had come to take for granted when the military organization of the LTTE was intact. Now, however, with the threat of imminent death removed, the TNA does not seem to be in a mood to toe the LTTE line unquestioningly any longer. The lack of a figure who can win the respect of the local Tamil leadership will be the Achilles heel of this Tamil transnational government. At the moment, it may be awash with money from the LTTE’s overseas operations, but with no presence on the ground, that very money may hasten its dissolution with the passage of time.

Labouring the obvious

There was once a group of newly qualified Egyptian doctors who went to a certain western nation for further training, and a newspaper in that country solemnly announced that among the things the doctors were taught was to wash their hands before performing surgery. In the month since the LTTE was wiped out, President Rajapaksa would have been feeling like those Egyptian doctors. There has been such a rush to make platitudinous statements about what he should do and not do, that the president might now have begun to doubt his own competence as a politician. In the wake of the LTTE’s defeat, statements saying the obvious emanated not only from abroad, but even from local political parties.

The TNA demanded the immediate resettlement of the IDPs without waiting for the de-mining of the north. One would expect such demands from the TNA; but even the JVP joined the chorus and the first point in their 14-point plan for the post conflict era was that the IDPs should be resettled as soon as possible. Needless to say, the president had not even acknowledged the JVP’s 14 point plan. In one sense it was the height of condescension for the JVP to imagine that the president was not aware of the need to re-settle the IDPs and that this had to be done within a reasonable time frame. It is undoubtedly a most vexatious thing to be told over and over again what one already knows and what one is already resolved to do. That is what the president has been subject to during the past one month and he may be missing the good old days when the LTTE was around, and there was some difference between what others wanted him to do and what he himself had resolved to do.

An article by Jeremy Khan in Newsweek dated May 18 – the day Prabhakaran died – lectured; "If Colombo truly wants reconciliation, it will have to do the following; hold free elections in Tamil dominated provinces, grant Tamil areas greater autonomy, and work with international donors to fairly distribute money for post-conflict reconstruction." Such sermons miss the point that the present government has already done all that in the eastern province. Local government and provincial council elections were held in the east, a Tamil chief minister has been appointed and there is a great deal of development work going on in the province. It is quite clear that the same pattern will be repeated in the north, where local government elections in Jaffna and Vavuniya have already been announced. Normalization may take some time, but hardly any rational person would say it’s not going to happen.

The main issue being discussed within the UNP at present is the question of appointing a ‘common candidate’ for the presidential elections. The formation of a broad alliance with all opposition forces was approved at the last working committee meeting and this is the natural corollary to that decision. There are various informal consultations going on within the UNP on this matter. The Friday before last there was one such consultation in parliament which was attended by Dayasiri Jayasekera, Lakshman Seneviratne, Ranjith Madduma Bandara, Johnston Fernando, Talatha Atukorale, Edward Gunawardene, Palitha Range Bandara, Ravi Karunanayake and Gayantha Karunatilleke among others. At this meeting, Ravi Karunanayake had broached the question of a common candidate and this had been strenuously opposed by Lakshaman Seneviratne, Johnston Fernando and Sajith Premadasa. What Seneviratne had said was that the present leader should contest the next presidential election and the one coming after that in 2017 as well. Premadasa had reiterated the position he had taken a couple of months back when Ranil Wickremesinghe himself offered to allow somebody else to contest the presidency at a working committee meeting. Premadasa had told him point blank, that if he is the leader, he has to contest.

Holes in Mangala’s plan

Karunanayae had then raised the question of getting the support of minor parties. To this Johnston Fernando had shot back that the UNP’s problem was not a question of attracting the minority vote but the vote of the majority community and that this was not going to be helped by fielding a so called common candidate. Johnston Fernando had also said that Mangala Samaraweera’s various schemes will not work. Samaraweera, as he explained to The Island in an interview some weeks back, is trying to replicate the strategy he and others like S.B.Dissanayake adopted in 1993/94 when he circumvented the presence of Mrs Bandaranaike as the leader of the SLFP by fielding Chandrika Kumaratunga as the common candidate of the People’s Alliance coalition. The common candidate once elected will override the leader of the main party in the coalition and continue as a kind of de facto party leader. The candidate many people have in mind is S.B.Dissanayake, but the problem is that Dissanayake himself has already gone on record saying that Wickremsinghe should be the next presidential candidate of the UNP. Dissanayake was not present at that meeting in parliament the Friday before last, but had he been there, it’s almost certain that he too would have echoed the views expressed by the Premadasa, Seneviratne and Fernando to the effect that Wickremesinghe should be the presidential candidate.

It would be correct to say that the UNP has never in its sixty plus history, fallen to such a sorry pass with the party leader and his close associates running round in circles trying to avoid contesting an election; and another faction within the party trying to pin him down to doing his job. All those opposed to Wickremesinghe want to see him contesting the next presidential election against Mahinda Rajapakse so that he will be defeated and ousting him will become that much easier. If there was the remotest possibility of a UNP victory at the presidential elections, there would have been a stampede to agree to Mangala Samaraweera’s suggestion of a common candidate so that the incumbent leader of the UNP could have been out-manoeuvred by the ‘common candidate’.

In 1994, the last time that this common candidate strategy was used to revive a prostrate political party, Mrs Sirima Bandaranaike’s chances of prevailing in a contest with her counterpart in the UNP, D.B.Wijetunga, was much better than Ranil’s chances against Mahinda. As it turned out, in 1994, both the UNP and the SLFP contested the presidential elections of that year, with candidates who were not leaders of the two parties. Even though the UNP fielded its best available candidate in Gamini Dissanayake, by the time of the 1994 presidential election, the PA’s victories in the Western Province and Southern Province at the 1993 provincial council elections, their repetition of that victory at the SPC elections of April 1994 and its victory at the parliamentary elections of August 1994 had given it a winning edge at the presidential elections.

This is where Samaraweera’s plan for the UNP has holes in it. In 1994, the common candidate fielded by the PA had a string of victories behind her and was on a winning streak. But today, there is no common candidate the UNP can field who has any record of victory. This is probably why second tier UNP people’s representatives like Provincial Councilor Maitri Gunaratne have suggested that the UNP make Mahinda Rajapakse their ‘common candidate’ and just refrain from contesting against him altogether! Common candidates at presidential elections cannot be just picked off the streets and turned into winners overnight.

Passions have been inflamed over this issue, and this is to be exhaustively discussed at next week’s political affairs committee meeting. This meeting was scheduled to have been held the day before yesterday, but because key members like Lakshman Seneviratne were busy finalizing nominations for the Uva PC elections the meeting had been postponed for the coming Wednesday.

We reported last week that members of the PAC had fought long and hard at the working committee meeting held on June 9 to get the decision to remove Justin Galappaththy from the district leadership of Matara reversed. The arguments over the Matara affair had dragged on for so long that the party secretary Tissa Attanayake had not been able to read out the decisions arrived at by the PAC to the working committee. As such Dayasiri Jayasekera’s appointment as the head of the UNP university student’s organization is still in limbo. Some members of the PAC say that Jayasekera’s appointment was confirmed at the working committee because Tissa Attanayake had said that the other decisions were deemed to have been passed. But Jayasekera himself says that he has not so far received any intimation from the party general secretary to the effect that he has been appointed as the head of the university student’s organization.

Hence three matters will dominate the discussion at next Wednesday’s political affairs committee meeting – Galappaththy’s issue, Jayasekera’s matter, and this question of a common candidate. Galappaththy and Jayasekera are now at the centre of the power struggle within the UNP. If Wickremesinghe wins, they get nothing. If the reformists win, Galappaththy gets his district leadership back and Jayasekera becomes the head of the UNP students wing.

A Sonia or a Rahul?

It will be interesting to see how things work out. In the meantime, Sagala Ratnayake has gone ahead and opened a new district office in Matara even though his name has not yet been confirmed by the working committee. Previously the district office was located in a part of Galappaththy’s house and Ratnayake did not have access to the premises. Whatever happens the reformists don’t want a situation where Wickremesinghe manages to avoid contesting the next presidential elections as that would mean that he would be able to save himself for 2017. Political commonsense will tell anyone that a leader who has been consistently defeated for 23 years, will not win in the 24th year. Besides, nobody in the UNP is certain that Wickremesinghe will be able to prevail even in 2017 against a candidate fielded by the UPFA – especially if the candidate happens to be a Rajapakse.

There are some Wickremesinghe loyalists within the UNP who would like to see Wickremesinghe playing the role of a Sonia Gandhi – remaining in the background while somebody else contests elections and holds public office. This is the ultimate nightmare for the reformists – Wickremesinghe becoming a permanent fixture in the UNP while conscripts are sent to the frontlines to fight and perish. Even though the Sonia Gandhi example may seem appealing at first sight, these parallels do not fit the peculiar situation that the UNP finds itself in. The Sonia model of doing politics emerged only as a result of the Congress party winning power in India in 2004. It is a format where the party leader stands aside and allows an able lieutenant to assume the position of head of government. This model cannot be applied to a situation where a party in opposition holds its leader back while others are sent to the polls to perish so that the incumbent leader would be able to serve in perpetuity as the leader of the opposition.

If Sonia herself had followed such a course of action, the Congress Party would never have won. In an interview last week with The Island, the late Ranjan Wijeratne’s son, Rohan suggested that what the UNP needs is not a Sonia Gandhi but a Rahul Gandhi who would rebuild the party from the grassroots level upwards.

Last week, members of the opposition coalition petitioned the Supreme Court to obtain access to the IDP camps of the north. But one wonders whether this was not a case of overkill because Sajith Premadasa who is a UNP politician and one who is in direct confrontation with the Rajapakse family in Hambantota to boot, had by last week finalized a programme with a Japanese charity called Peace Wind to provide maintenance for 5,000 IDP families. That would work out to something like 8% of the total IDP population in the north. The MOU in this regard has been signed between this Japanese charity and the Janasuwaya foundation which is headed by Premadasa.

This Janasuwaya Foundation is the organization that Sajith Premadasa, who makes no bones about his ambition to lead the UNP in his own right one day, has used to spread his influence throughout the length and breadth of the country. When he first started this program, he met with resistance from within the UNP with electoral organizers complaining that he was invading their turf. But later, when electoral organizers realized that he was carrying out programs outside his own district, they began to co-operate, because these programs gave them also an opportunity to be able to be seen to be doing something at no cost to themselves.

Premadasa’s foray into the north, by expanding his Janasuwaya programme to the IDP camps is to woo a constituency vital to his long term project. Many Tamils see his father, the late President R.Premadasa, as one Sinhala leader who understood the Tamil problem. TNA parliamentarian N.Srikantha speaking to the Island last week, singled out Premadasa senior as the one leader who sincerely wanted to solve the problems of the Tamil people. So Premadasa junior has a base to build on in the north and one might think that given this background that the government would place obstacles in his way to a much greater extent than in the case of other UNP parliamentarians who will not be able to build a base for themselves in that part of the country.