Winning by losing

When the results of last week’s Local Government elections came out, one can be sure that many on the side of the governing party heaved a sigh of relief. It is not that in total, in elections held on both March 17 and July 23, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) won 250 out of 299 Councils and 2,351 members. It was not even that the UPFA got its best result, islandwide, in Delft.

On the contrary, the cause for celebration was that the UPFA lost in every other council in the North than Delft, Kayts and Velanai.

For weeks before the elections, reportage in the foreign (and indeed much of the local media) was focused on electoral malpractices, on voter intimidation and impersonation in the North.

Incredibly, while there was ample coverage of alleged incidents of electoral violence by the UPFA, there was hardly any of the alleged incidents of intimidation by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) - which were also recorded by polls monitors.

For weeks before the elections, the word had been going around people in the Tamil diaspora: ‘if the UPFA wins, we’ll know the elections were rigged’.

Governing party

When the TNA - contesting as the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK - Lanka Tamil Rule Party) - won all but three of the councils in the North, it was clear to the entire world that there had been no appreciable electoral manipulation or violence on the part of the governing party.

The government needed to lose the elections if it were to win!

Meanwhile, there was very little partying by people aligned with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Most of them had been hoping for a UPFA victory, so that they could demonstrate to the world that Sri Lanka was a repressive tyranny.

However, now it has become impossible to draw any comparisons between the rule of Velupillai Prabhakaran and his bloodthirsty mobsters on the one hand and the democratically elected government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa on the other.

For when had the LTTE ever allowed its political opponents to control even a village conciliation board, let alone a local authority? Its very first act had been the murder of the democratically elected Mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Durraiappah.

There is no doubt that, through the exercise of their democratic right to vote, the Tamil people of the North and East have demonstrated their confidence in the electoral system. That in itself is a huge defeat for the fascists of the LTTE and their sponsors overseas.

Tamil voters

The Local Government elections in the North and East were the first steps towards reconciliation between the estranged ethnic communities of Sri Lanka.

The TNA’s M A Sumanthiram has called for a change in the Tamil diaspora’s attitude towards his party’s engagement with the government - which bodes well for the future.

So much for the good news. It is also necessary to analyse why the UPFA did so badly in the North.

As an aside, it should be noted that the TNA contested as ITAK, which was the Tamil name of the traditional party of the Northern Tamils - the Federal party of SJV Chelvanayagam. This gave it considerable traction among Tamil voters.

However, the results show that the Tamil people in the North harbour grievances, which need to be addressed.

First of all, it needs to tread lightly to ensure that there is no triumphalism on the part of the majority community, no slights or insults (imagined or otherwise) - which have played a part in alienating the Northern Tamil community.

Economic growth

It has to speed up development work. It is no accident that the UPFA only did well in the islands. It is here that the bulk of development has taken place. In the rest of the North, work has gone on painfully slowly.

There are, of course, reasons for this. The greatest is that the resources available are not sufficient for the gigantic task of rebuilding what is, in essence, a broken and ruined region.

With all the hand-wringing of the so-called ‘international community’ over the fate of the Tamil people, one should have expected a deluge of funds and other resources for the reconstruction of the North once the fighting stopped.

However, with a few notable exceptions, this has not happened. Sri Lanka’s tried and tested allies have come to the country’s aid, but not the biggest hand-wringers.

For example, resettlement has been predicated on the clearing of mines and booby traps. Except for the efforts of Denmark, Switzerland, the Mines Action Group and the UNDP and UNICEF, there has been little help and the bulk of demining and delousing is carried out by the Army.

Reconciliation process

The hand-wringers have limited their participation to loud demands that people be resettled before the mines and booby traps are removed.

Having granted all that, there still remains the fact that the people of the North have a long way to go yet. The North leads the country in the rate of economic growth, but this is because it is still catching up. As hard as the government is running, it must run harder.

It is only reasonable that the Tamil diaspora should step up. The Tamil people of the North have given their opinion and the Tamil diaspora should support them.

And they can help, not merely by investing their funds in the future of the North, but by bringing pressure to bear on the governments of the countries they reside in to aid in the reconstruction of the North.

They can also help speed along the process of reconciliation by building bridges with the expatriate members of the other ethnic communities of Sri Lanka.