ELECTIONS IN EAST CAN HAVE MAJOR POLITICAL IMPACT

--Jehan Perera
The government has declared elections for the provincial council in the east to be held on May 10. This call for elections by the government has been a bold one.
The success of the government in conducting the local government elections peaceably in the Batticaloa district, which is one of the three districts that comprise the Eastern province, would also have emboldened the government to take up the challenge of elections. Although substantial areas of the Eastern Province had been under LTTE control, by mid 2007 the government was successful in driving the LTTE out of all areas that it had taken control over. The local government elections were conducted under more peaceful conditions than anticipated.
The forthcoming provincial council elections will be the first ever for the Eastern Province as a political unit. The last and only time that the voters in the Eastern Province experienced a provincial election was 20 years ago in 1988. At that time the Eastern Province was temporarily merged with the Northern Province under the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of 1987, which lasted until 2006 when the Supreme Court declared the merger to be invalid. The merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces, which together comprise about 30 percent of the country’s land mass, and which ensured a Tamil majority administration, was the price that India demanded from Sri Lanka in order to disarm the LTTE and restore peace. The failure of the Indian Peacekeeping Force to achieve this latter objective made the merger vulnerable in law, as the conditions for the merger were not obtained.
In addition, the prospect of fueling Tamil separatism by enabling a Tamil majority administration over a substantial part of the country was a festering source of anxiety to the Sinhalese majority population. The provincial council for the merged North East Province was dissolved by a presidential decree in 1990 after its Chief Minister Varatharaja Perumal, frustrated by the lack of power and resources granted to him by the central government, made a futile unilateral declaration of independence.
In an ironic twist, provincial councils were established in the seven Sinhalese-majority provinces that did not ask for devolved power, but that too with only partial powers being devolved to them. After the negative experiment in operating the provincial council in the north east, no further provincial council elections were held in either of those two provinces. LARGER OBJECTIVES Several political circumstances appear to have induced the present government to take up the challenge of elections.
The first reason is that the election of the new Provincial Council could consolidate the separation of the Eastern Province from the Northern Province, by putting elected representatives from the east into positions of power that they would be reluctant to give up thereafter. While this would be a blow to Tamil nationalism that considers the two provinces to be the Tamil Homeland to which Tamils have special claim, their separation would assuage those who fear that a merged North East is a recipe for a future breakaway bid to independence, like Kosovo. Second, by bringing back the ballot to areas that had been totally ruled by the gun, the government also obtained a political triumph.
The elections were won convincingly by the armed breakaway faction of the LTTE, the TMVP which has allied itself with the government in what turned out to be a one horse race. This may have led the government to believe that it could repeat its triumph in the larger Eastern Province. On the other hand, the absence of the TNA and UNP which are the two main opposition parties that could have given the TMVP a battle for the votes of the people undoubtedly assisted the TMVP to score victory without having to resort to violence. Third, the holding the provincial elections for the east would do something to respond to the growing international demand for the government to embark upon a viable political process that could result in a political solution to the ethnic conflict.
The government’s answer, through the All Party process, has been to offer the 13th Amendment that was the outcome of Indian intervention in the country’s ethnic conflict in the latter half of the 1980s and which culminated in the signing of the Indo Lanka Peace Accord of 1987. The government has pledged to fully implement the 13th Amendment that established provincial councils with devolved power to the provinces. The problem for the government, however, is that the pursuit of these larger political objectives of consolidating the separation of the Eastern Province and assuaging the concerns of the international community may not necessarily lead it to victory at the forthcoming elections.
The victory obtained by the government and its ally, the TMVP, at the local government elections in the Batticaloa district may not be repeated at the elections for the entire province. The TMVP’s special strength in the Batticaloa district, which is predominantly Tamil, will not carry over to the rest of the province, and in particular to the Trincomalee and Ampara districts which are predominantly non-Tamil.
In addition, there is a further factor that will make electoral victory in the Eastern Province much more difficult for the government. Both the TNA and UNP boycotted the Batticaloa local government elections on the grounds that the TMVP’s retention of their arms posed a security threat to rival candidates. The refusal of the government to disarm the TMVP on the grounds of self-defense has been widely criticized by all rival political parties and by civil society groups. Many of the civil society groups even rejected the Batticaloa local government elections as failing to meet the basic standards of free and fair elections due to the fact of the TMVP being an armed group. UNP ADVANTAGE This time around, however, it is clear that at least the UNP will be contesting the Eastern Province elections despite the TMVP continuing to retain their arms. There is an obligation upon the government to ensure that the TMVP does not resort to violence or the threat of violence during the election.
The generally peaceful manner in which the Batticaloa local government elections took place may have served to reassure the country’s largest opposition party that contesting the elections will not translate into an automatic death sentence for its candidates at the hands of the TMVP. The UNP would also have seen that elections are the lifeblood of democratic politics and that boycotting an electoral process seldom wins admiration and inevitably leads to political marginalization.
In addition, there are indications that the UNP might be able to pose a strong challenge to the government at the provincial elections, which is now even fueling speculation that the government may wish to call off the elections. The UNP is currently negotiating with the SLMC, which is the strongest Muslim political party in the east which is its home base. As the Muslims constitute the largest single ethnic community in the Eastern Province at the present time obtaining the support of their main representative is likely to be beneficial to the prospects of electoral success. A further advantage that is likely to accrue to the UNP is the TNA’s decision to boycott the provincial council elections.
The conduct of elections in the Eastern Province only, which consolidates the de-merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces, goes contrary to the fundamental aspiration of Tamil nationalism, which affirms that the two provinces constitute the Tamil Homeland. The TNA seeks to represent both the interests of the Tamil community as well as those of the LTTE to which they are hostage. It is believed that the LTTE has denied the TNA permission to contest the Eastern province elections.
Tamil voters who prefer to vote for a democratic party rather than for an armed party, which is what the TMVP continues to be, could opt for the UNP. Needless to say, a positive electoral verdict for the government will embolden it to continue on its present path of military conquest over the LTTE followed by elections that consolidate government rule over previously LTTE-controlled areas.
The success of this strategy in the east would encourage the government to continue with its military campaign in the north against the LTTE, although it seems to have slowed down at the present time due to inclement weather conditions and stiff resistance by the LTTE. On the other hand, if the UNP-led opposition should get the upper hand at the Eastern Province elections, it would cast doubt on the long term electoral viability of the government’s counter-LTTE strategy. This means that the stakes at these elections are very high, and the temptation to resort to violence to win at any price has to be resisted.