The year 2010 has dawned with two elections round the corner. As voters who are going to write the destiny of the politicians of this country, our day-to-day conversations are becoming more and more centred on what is going to happen on the 26th of January and later on in the Parliamentary election. My casual dialogues with my Sinhala speaking friends help me see that the Tamils are not the only people who have serious problems in this country. While I— a person belonging to the minority Tamil community—am thinking of how the majoritarian, non-secular character of the Sri Lankan state could be dismantled through a democratic process, my Sinhala speaking friends, many of whom share my middle class background, speak about problems like rising food prices, irregular bus services, development and unemployment with which they have to grapple daily. While I am prioritizing, from a Tamil’s point of view, the creation of a secular state where the ethnic and religious minorities could live with dignity, they want a state which could ensure the dignity of the non-elite, underprivileged Sinhala polity. On the whole, we are desiring for state reform (or different forms of state reform); but, of course, in different ways.
This divergence between our paths to change the structure of the current Sri Lankan state, although causing an impasse and leaving us with no concrete path to achieve our goals together, should open up a new political space at least now. Difference produces a gap, and this gap could be reconfigured as a productive space for meaningful political dialogue and activism. In the post-independence political history of Sri Lanka, the new political space which we are desiring has hardly existed. As in the case of the Tamils, there exist many disparities among the Sinhala people. The Western Province has seen more development, and in certain ways, has been enjoying more privileges than the other regions. In the case of the other provinces, development has been limited to the towns, and the rural areas have been continuously neglected by the economic policies of the successive governments. If we strive towards creating a better Sri Lanka, the grievances of both the rural, middle and working class Sinhala population and the minorities (I acknowledge that there are vast differences among the minorities in terms of ethnicity, religion, region, caste, class and gender) should be addressed simultaneously by a common front. There should be a common space where the politically oppressed minorities and the underprivileged Sinhala polity could understand each other’s problems and work together to dismantle the majoritarian, bourgeoise structures that are embedded in the Sri Lankan state.
Unfortunately, this space cannot be created within the current political system which is dominated by two political alliances – UPFA and UNF. President Mahinda Rajapakshe and his UPFA, though having the support of the rural Sinhala population, are not willing to sideline parties like the JHU and NFF which fan flame the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism in both overt and covert ways. On the other hand, although the UNP seems to be relatively progressive than the UPFA in finding a solution to the problems of the ethnic minorities, its economic policies have failed to eliminate the problems the middle class, rural Sinhala population has been facing for so many years. The inability of the two political alliances to create the political space which Sri Lanka is in dire need of should urge us to consider a third political option in the forthcoming elections.
To break with the two dominant political alliances and search for a third alternative is now in the hands of the voter. We keep on saying that our political parties and our struggles for democratic and political rights are de-linked from us. Political parties cannot be blamed for the failure forever. On many occasions we have cut ourselves off from constructive political activism, and remained inactive onlookers. Instead of lamenting that “voting for a third candidate or a third political party means wasting our votes,” we, the voters, have to decide in what way we could free ourselves from the bi-party/ bi-alliance political system which has paralyzed us so far. If we do not act quickly to understand each other’s problems and create a common ground to work together, capitalists and nationalists on both sides would captialize the situation for their own ends.