Tamil Diaspora:

Democracy is in the hearts of the people. Tamils in the government, Tamils in the provincial councils, Tamils in the Municipal councils, Tamils freely move than Sinhalese. No Eelam, but well Ellaam!

On the ability to freely campaign, while it obviously is relevant and important to creating a truly democratic representative system of governance, I’m interested to know to what extent party loyalty plays a role in politics in Jaffna.

For example, Colombo would never be won (sans ballet stuffing) by the SLFP/UPFA no matter how ever much they campaign. Considering the long and complex pedigree of many of the parties that contested in the MC election I wonder if voters would actually have been swayed to the TNA or the EPDP based on policies. Is it the policy or the personality that matters in the end? If it’s the latter, the ability to hire a vehicle wouldn’t have much played on the result of the vote.

Also, I note with regret Achcharya’s obsession with ethnic thinking. Possibly, he’d just being practical in assuming all muslim votes would go to the muslim candidate. Reminds me of the famous election banner from a general election in the 50s – “ooth kupadiya, mooth kupadiya. Ape kupadiyata chande deepung!’ (‘that guy’s a crook and this guy’s a crook. just vote for our own crook.’) It is a sad result of the nature of politics in Sri Lanka. Just an observation.

This piece of mine was not an analysis. It was an email that i wrote to a few colleagues and friends which the editor of GV was interested in publishing. Its only a commentary on the numbers.

Ambassador Jayatilleke had said in an article that was published in the island yesterday that ‘the Tamil people of Jaffna have opted for Douglas Devananda as their next leader’. http://www.island.lk/2009/08/10/features1.html My commentary on the numbers disagree with this conclusion.

Jehan’s article was shoddily researched at best, and was intentionally misleading at worst. The claim that “the elections on August 8, 2009 were conducted in a peaceful manner that evoked memories of a bygone era before the armed Tamil militancy took the upper hand in the North” is just blatantly false. The Center for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) documented dozens of incidents of election violence- you can find their reports here: http://www.cpalanka.org/page.php?id=0&catid=40key=d5051bfaac9825589ac14cb898d52227

Furthermore, even if Jehan’s claim (which is actually PAFFREL’s claim; see http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID=57492) that the voter turnout in Jaffna was actually double the reported 18%, that’s still low. And if the claim is true, perhaps he could have at least pointed out that the reason that the said voters were hypothetically “no longer living in Jaffna”, was because they were dead, according to PAFFREL.

ps: I am not a Buddhist…nor am I a Hindu…

No one has answered how the devolution of power helps majority of Tamils in SL, who are living mainly in central and western provinces, which are heavily populated by Sinhalese.

The better option may be to devolve power geographically, not in a racial basis. For that current absurd district borders has to be erased and new borders has to be defined. Defining it by using watersheds of rivers or rivers themselves in SL will be beneficial because most of the Lankans are still farmers and it will help to solve problems.

UNITED PEOPLE’S FREEDOM ALLIANCE (UPFA): 10,602 (13 seats)
ILANKAI TAMIL ARASU KADCHI (ITAK): 8,008 (8 seats)
INDEPENDENT GROUP 1: 1,175 (1 seat)
TAMIL UNITED LIBERATION FRONT: 1,007 (1 seat)
UNITED NATIONAL PARTY: 83 (no seat)
INDEPENDENT GROUP 2: 47 (no seat)

Valid Votes: 20,922
Rejected Votes: 1,358
Total Polled: 22,280
Registered Electors: 100,417

Vavuniyaa Urban Council:

ILLANKAI TAMIL ARASU KADCHI: 4,279 (34.81%, 5 seats)
DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S LIBERATION FRONT:4,136 (33.65%, 3 seats)
UNITED PEOPLE’S FREEDOM ALLIANCE: 3,045 (24.77%, 2 seats)
SRI LANKA MUSLIM CONGRESS: 587 (4.78%, 1 seat)
UNITED NATIONAL PARTY: 228 (1.85%)
SRI LANKA PROGRESSIVE FRONT: 10 (0.08%)
INDEPENDENT GROUP 1: 6 (0.08%)
INDEPENDENT GROUP 3: 1 (0.05%)
INDEPENDENT GROUP 2: -

Valid Votes 12,292
Rejected Votes 558
Total Polled 12,850
Registered Electors 24,626

With all the intimidation that went on prior to the elections in Jaffna, the UPFA was only able to get 2600 more votes than the TNA? Food for thought eh? In Vauniya the UPFA was wiped out by the TNA and the DPLF…the sinhalese in UWA might still be in a war frenzy…but the tamils up north cannot be cowed by government intimidation! If Rajapaksa wants a lasting peace, he should devolve power NOW…and not later…that is the least that the tamils will settle for!

If people want to stick it to the government that’s fine by me, as long as they participate in governance.

“…By way of contrast, the elections on August 8, 2009 were conducted in a peaceful manner that evoked memories of a bygone era before the armed Tamil militancy took the upper hand in the North.

The Northern elections defied expectations by being virtually incident free. Initially there was an expectation that these elections could follow the pattern of the elections in the East in 2007. At those elections the LTTE’s breakaway Karuna group renamed TMVP was liberal in its use of violence, intimidating candidates, voters and election officials alike. The government’s security forces rarely intervened to enforce the law. But at the recently concluded Northern elections the situation was different. Perhaps this reflects the aberrant nature of the LTTE period, which held an entire society in the thrall of violence.

Some of the contesting Tamil political parties retained paramilitary forces to protect themselves from the LTTE, but also had a reputation for using their weapons to intimidate and coerce the civilian population. Credit must be given to the leaders of these parties for ensuring that their cadre who retained their arms restrained themselves to practice non-violent politics. Perhaps they had the political sense to realize that they could not aspire to be mainstream leaders of the Tamil people if they continued to engage in intimidation and coercion. As a result the verdict at the polls is likely to reflect the sentiments of the Northern electorate at this point of time, despite shortcomings.

One such shortcoming at the Jaffna elections was the utilization of an electoral register that had not been properly updated. As a result although the electoral register led to the issuance of 100,747 polling cards, only 54,000 of them could be delivered. It is likely that the balance is not living any longer in Jaffna. The bloated figure in the electoral register also gives rise to the impression of a lower participation rate in the election than is actually warranted. The 18 percent participation figure was based on a non-existent electorate of a 100,000 when in reality the amount of voters was half of that. This would approximately double the effective voter participation rate.”

- Implications of the Northern election verdict
by Jehan Perera

One wonder whether Dr Jayathilake has joined Devananda as propaganda secretary