A task for national political parties

Dwelling on the many freedoms the victory over the LTTE by the Security Forces has bestowed on Sri Lanka, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in the course of his Victory Day address to the country that our national political parties are now free to function in the North. Hopefully, this observation has received the complete attention of the parties concerned because the pronouncement focuses on some interesting possibilities in the North-East for our political parties.

For reasons that are complex, some of our oldest political parties have come to be associated with the majority community, mainly, over the decades, except for the long-standing Left parties. This should not have happened, ideally, and it should be clear to those desirous of national unity that our national political parties should live up to their name and be representative of the totality of the public to the extent possible. It is not our argument that this is not so already, but our contention is that these parties could be much more representative of our communities. The freedom that has opened-up in the North-East permits these parties to work on these limitations now and eliminate them by increasingly enlisting into their fold members from the totality of our communities.

In this respect, the SLFP has done better than other non-Left political parties that call themselves ‘national’ because it has followed the pragmatic policy of forming an alliance with many parties which represent a wide cross-section of our public. The UPFA could be said to be a truly national alliance because it has within its fold a multiplicity of interests and to that extent could be said to be widely-inclusive.

Be that as it may, we believe that the time has come for a re-orientation of our older, non-Left political parties so that they will cease to be seen as predominantly representative of this or that interest. The SLFP has fared better than most other parties in this regard because it has brought within its fold some young political leaders from the North-East, such as, Arun Thambimuttu, who could be described as representative of the youth of the once conflict-hit areas. He could be said to be a new ‘voice’ in North-East politics which articulates a political position which is non-separatist and supportive of a united Sri Lanka.

Accordingly, these voices are antithetical to the separatist platform of parties, such as, the TNA. Such personnel who, we are given to understand, are on the increase need to be brought into the national fold through our political parties, so that separatist politics will come to an end. This measure will also prove useful in alienating the forces of separatism from the rest of the body-politic.

For national political parties, such as, the SLFP to be successful in this endeavour, they would need to consistently project the vision of a strongly united, all-inclusive Sri Lanka in which all its communities could be equal stake-holders. From this point of view, President Rajapaksa’s renewed rejection of communalism and sectarian politics could prove very instructive.

As we see it, there is no future for a Sri Lanka which is segmented by communalistic and other such parochial forces. If the 30 year long bloody conflict has taught us something, it is that inflamed communal and religious divisions could tear this country apart. In such implosive crises there are no winners or losers. There are only losers.

Therefore, our political parties that swear by the democratic creed need to fan out in the North-East and include into their fold all Sri Lanka-centred, rational political activists who would work as one man towards national development. There are ethnic political parties in the North-East and they have proved a negative feature of our body-politic over the years. The conditions should not be permitted in any part of this country which would facilitate the growth of narrow, parochial loyalties and tendencies which would enable divisive politics to thrive in this country once again.

Ethnic parties would have no impact on their targeted constituencies if national parties outdo them in winning the complete loyalty of the people. Accordingly, the aim of our democratic parties should be to espouse the cause of social justice more strongly and ensure that they would be the magnets of all right-thinking persons.