REFUGEE

Whatever thus remained memorable at the end of the day was the ‘deportation’ of pro-LTTE Tamil Nadu film-maker Seeman by the Canadian authorities, and the controversial statement of ‘Col’ A Ram, once an aide of LTTE supremo Prabhakaran,. Blaming Prabhakaran for his ‘uncompromising approach’, Ram said – and from ‘nowhere’ – that the organization was now ready for ‘any compromise’, to arrive at a political solution to the ethnic issue.

In a way, the return of TNA members of Parliament staying outside the country for long may go a long way in reviving the political spirit of the larger Tamil community. They were either facing or anticipating criminal action on their return home.

That not much of the kind has happened since their return home is an encouraging sign that the Sri Lankan Government is intent on engaging them in a political process. By allowing them to engage in political processes, including elections, the Government can now give shape to the TNA’s intent of not adopting a ‘confrontationist approach’ for problem-solving.

‘Compromise’ was also what leaders of 13 parties of the Tamil-speaking people(s) in Sri Lanka, meeting in Zurich, arrived at after three days of confabulations. Most of them had met once earlier at Colombo in end-April, to take up the ‘IDP issue’ with President Mahinda Rajapaksa even before the end of the ethnic war.

The results at Zurich were as mixed as it was in Colombo. The fact that they were all willing to meet and were able to meet owed it to the exit of the LTTE. Most of them have always had a commonality of approach towards the ethnic issue. Where they have always differed was in their methods to achieve those goals.

Some like the EPDP, PLOTE and EPRLF (Naba) have felt that they should either be in the Government or with the Government, to be able to achieve their political goals. It is so with parties like the CWC, which had divined the principle of cooperation and cohabitation with the majority party for the larger and long-term benefit of the minority community, in the first place. A few Muslim parties have since concurred with the CWC position of long.

Against this, you have had parties like the SLMC and the DPF, which have adopted different methods to press their goals. They have also had political preferences from within the majority Sinhala community for partners. That such preferences have not held always, nor have they produced results for their constituencies and their problems should be noted, as well.

The Zurich conference, held at the instance of the Swiss Foreign Ministry and the University of Essex, UK, did bring them all together under the same roof for a considerable length of time, outside of Sri Lankan Parliament, where again not all of them have representation. Yet, when they were back in Colombo, the political divisions did show up.

Not that they were unaware of those differences while in Zurich. According to reports, some participants had underlined the impossibility of their coming together on a common political platform on an early date. They had their own reasons for vetoing detailed discussions on the political aspects of mutual cooperation, as set out in the conference Agenda. The presidential polls did the rest of it once they were all back home.

It is not as if the Tamil parties cannot work together politically. In a parliamentary election, which is anyway due by mid-April, the parties of the “Tamil-speaking peoples” (as underlined in the Zurich statement) could not only consolidate their collective gains at the polls, but also their collective bargaining power, post-poll.

In turn, this would imply that they stick together, both during the polls and afterwards. It is easier said than done – not because there are differences in policies and approaches, but because such differences are over egos, personalities and leaderships. Post-poll, the Tamils cannot complain that the ‘Sinhala majority’ did them in all over again. The rot is very much within, as well.

That is as far as the parliamentary polls go. Beforehand, however, the Tamils, like the rest of the country, have to make their choice in the presidential election. If independent of policies and programmes, the Sinhala majority voters have to choose between a ‘war leader’ and a ‘war hero’, the Tamils will have to choose, in the perception of some, between two ‘war villains’.

There are of course Tamil leaders and parties that are committed to either President Rajapaksa or his ‘common challenger’ in Sarath Fonseka in the presidential polls. There are others, particularly from the North, who may feel that they are left with little choice. The TNA feels that way, but at the same time does not want to ‘boycott’ the presidential polls, a la LTTE, and get branded as such in the post-war period, as well.

‘Boycott of the polls’ by the Tamils, as enforced by the LTTE, did UNP candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe in, the last time round. Alternatively, at least that is what his camp believes. Today, when there is no LTTE to enforce any ban of the kind, and there are sections of the Tamil population that may want to vote anyone but President Rajapaksa, for reasons of war, victory and violence, the UNP has not offered them a commendable alternative.

Independent of the JVP backing that he has mustered, the UNP candidate that Fonseka is, cannot be a favourite of Tamil voters, and for obvious reasons. Maybe because the party was not in power during ‘Eelam War IV’, an UNP candidate might have become a favourite for those Tamil voters that had been forced to boycott the polls the last time round.

As irony would have it, it is the UNP that has now boycotted the Tamil voters by not fielding a candidate to call its own in the presidential polls. That flows from the party’s lack of confidence in mustering the Sinhala vote – and does not necessarily owe to the lack of confidence that the ‘Tamil voter’ in the UNP. There is nothing on record to show that otherwise is the case.

President Rajapaksa has attributed the poll advancement to his desire for obtaining a mandate that also involved the Tamil voters from the North and the East, who were forcibly kept out by the LTTE last time. If he meant that he needed that kind of mandate to put forward a ‘Thirteen-Plus’ kind of peace proposals, he has not unveiled it, as yet.