THE NEW POLITICS ASKS FOR NO PCs

In these pages today, we have interviewed Arun Tambimuttu, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party organizer for Batticaloa, a man who knows of brutality first hand, as both his parents were gunned down by the LTTE for their politics. Tambimuttu’s politics therefore is mediated by his yearning for a society free of fascism and the dictatorship of the AK 47.

Happily, in this quest, he is joined by multitudes of Tamils who want to eschew the politics of the gun as if their lives depended on it – well, because their lives depend on it!

Tambimuttu today voices the sentiments of a new generation of Tamils whose worldview is leavened by instincts of a pragmatic brand of dynamism -- which is an outlook directly fashioned by the fact that they are sick of the disruptive politics that comes out of the barrel of a gun.

Tambimuttu in this interview argues against the provincial unit of devolution, and he says evocatively that for him for instance, the Eastern Province means nothing -- he is a Batticaloa man. But more importantly, he shows why he is a member of a newly empowered minority community with a pragmatic persuasion.

He decries pointedly the Tamil politics of parochialism, and states that Ponnambalam ludicrously asked for 50-50 representation, while Chelvanayakam pursued a federalist agenda from the outset, which set the tone for the political tumult to come.

In this way he traces the outlines for a new Tamil politics that includes a demand for the dismantling of Provincial Councils to be replaced by a Panchayat devolution system which he says is devolution that is closer to the people.

If shared powers are not accessible and are far beyond the reach of the ordinary man, of what good is the politically highfalutin concept of devolution? With Provincial Councils, a state with its centralized system of administration is replaced by states within states -- hence Batticaloa native Tambimuttu’s plaintive cry ‘I am from Batticaloa, the Eastern province is something else to me.’

This then is the new Tamil politics that is grounded on empathy for the people, and not empathy for the leadership. A leadership will want to think big for reasons of petty personal aggrandizement. A feudal lord will no doubt be happier, the larger his fiefdom.

But real devolution is devoid of meaning if power goes down to the level of the people ostensibly, but is in fact retained with big monolithic provincial institutions machined by big provincial politics.

Tambimuttu’s stance serves to stave off heartache for the local grass roots man while saving millions for the national exchequer. It is more importantly a position that short circuits the inherent divisiveness that is the by-product of ethno-politics.

Race based units of devolution as big as Provincial Councils are good for the benefit of people who want big vehicles and a big flock as if they are charismatic leaders of new fangled Church denominations. But the country does not want Billy Grahams and Sai Babas, with no disrespect to these magnetic personalities who built their own religious brands.

The country needs people who can work their farms, get things done, run their corner shops with state and other inputs when necessary, and all this without creating massive bulwarks of power that create friction between different power centres and severely burden the exchequer. (Read “Provincial Councils.’’)

That’s why Arun Tambimuttu makes sense. He is also ready to put his money where his mouth is and take the message to the people who cannot necessarily relate to the natural grass roots sentiment which is to do away with the PCs. His new group of Tamil intellectuals will talk to the decision making elite.

They will convince people and leaders that there is a new political paradigm in operation peopled by those of the brave new post terrorism world, who are also past the era of divisive ethnic Tamil politics. He is a man on a mission. There will be millions to raise a hand for this new pragmatic brand along with him.