Sri lankan Tamils have reason to celebrate
The Provincial Council election in Sri lanka's war-affected Northern Province held this past Saturday is significant on several counts. It marks a tremendous victory for the region's Tamil majority population which exercised its franchise for the first time in 25 years. It reiterates the democratic credentials of the much-maligned regime in Colombo led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. It paves the way for a peaceful political solution to a long-festering problem that has polarised the country. Finally, it is a diplomatic victory for India which has long advocated the Provincial Council as a bridge between Sri lanka's Sinhala majority and its Tamil minority. In fact, the prevailing Provincial Council system was born out of the 1987 India-Sri lanka Peace Accord. The first election was held in 1988. However, the Council was never allowed to function by the radical liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which plunged Sri lanka into a bloody civil war that would end only two decades later in 2009 after the Rajapaksa Government launched a military crackdown. In the four years since then, Colombo has come under international pressure to hold elections in the erstwhile war-zone as part of larger reconciliation measures. But the Rajapaksa regime feared that opening up political space in the Northern Province may reverse the fragile and hard-won gains that it had made. In this context, Saturday's election marks the beginning of a new phase in Sri lankan politics.
The Tamil National Alliance — an umbrella group of pro-Tamil parties — has swept the polls and holds 30 of the 38 Council seats. Its victory reiterates the Tamil population's continued demand for autonomous rule and Colombo will do well to keep this in mind. Mr Rajapaksa's party has won only seven seats in the Council (and a Muslim party won a single seat). This may strike a discordant note given that the President had sought to curry favour with the Tamil population by conducting an aggressive infrastructure development programme and is otherwise popular in the rest of the country for his no-nonsense policies. But his defeat in the Northern Province is symbolic; the Council will be overseen by a powerful Governor appointed by Colombo, with wide-ranging powers. Also, the federal Government will continue to hold the purse strings of the Northern Province. While critics believe that arrangement renders the Council toothless, it does not mean that the local body will become a complete rubber stamp for the Governor. Because the TNA has a two-thirds majority, it means that if push comes to shove, it will have the power to move a no-confidence vote against the Governor. Former Chief Justice and Chief Minister-elect of the Northern Province CV Wigneswaran has already said that he will not let the Council become a puppet regime and urged Colombo to “trust” the TNA. Already, the federal Government has accused the Tamil alliance, once the lTTE's political wing, of re-igniting demands for a separate state. It should instead focus on working with moderates like Mr Wigneswaran who do not want to secede from Sri lanka but demand meaningful autonomy. Chalking out the details on devolution of power is a contentious matter, and Colombo and Jaffna must find ways to be on the same page.