Former Tamil National Alliance MP and Batticaloa-based Tamil politician Packiaselvam Ariyanethran has been declared a ‘common presidential candidate’ by several Tamil National Parties.
The announcement was made by Nallathamby Srikantha a former Tamil MP and senior attorney and leader of the Tamil National Party, at a joint meeting of Tamil National Parties, Civil Society Organization members, academics, and others in Jaffna.
While a Tamil candidate for the September 21st Presidential election has been declared, no consensus has emerged among the Tamil parties.
Even among the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) to which Packiaselvam Ariyanetharan belongs there is no common ground. While ITAK President-elect and Jaffna district MP Sivagnanam Shritharan says he personally supports a common candidate, his party colleague and attorney M. A. Sumanthiran has openly declared he is against any common Tamil candidate.
“Supporting a common Tamil coyandidate is my personal opinion because we have been let down continuously for voting for the Sinhala candidates and don’t want to repeat it. However, the final decision of the party will be made after the General Council meeting scheduled on the 11th of August” says Shritharan.
But Sumanthairan is more vocal in his stand and has made it categorically clear he is not in favour of any such proposal.
“The common Tamil candidate idea is a very bad one because it will make the Tamil cause weak, Sumanthiran said. “This is not an election one can use to send a message on Tamil issues. This is not a referendum on the right of self-determination,” he had told a Colombo based TV station.
He had been talking to Sinhala frontrunners in order before deciding on backing a candidate.
The declaration of a common Tamil candidate is continuing as a contentious issue among the Tamil parties. While the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) led by Jaffna district parliamentarian Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam has called for the boycott of the ensuing presidential poll, the pro-government Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) led by fisheries minister Douglas Devananda supports a Sinhala candidate mostly the current President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
An agreement to put forward a common Tamil candidate was reached between various Tamil parties and Civil Society organizations and signed accordingly. Apart from the social organizations support for the common candidate came from former Chief Minister of the Northern Province and leader of the Tamil People National Alliance, Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) led by Vanni district MP Selvam Adaikkalanathan, Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) led by former Jaffna MP Suresh Premachandran, People’s Liberation Organization for Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) with Dharmalingam Sitharthan as its leader, former Northern Province Minister Ponnuthurai Ayngaranesan led Tamil National Green Movement and Crusaders Democratic Party comprising former LTTE cadres.
Despite being signatories to the agreement C.V. Wigneswaran, Selvam Adaikkalanathan and Dharmalingam Sitharthan did not attend the meeting in Jaffna where the name of the common candidate was revealed.
Even in TELO, the support for the common candidate is divided. While its leader supported the move, the party’s other MP from Vanni, Vino Noharathalingam has publicly opposed this stand saying “The idea of a common candidate doesn’t make sense without the ITAK and TNPF coming on board”.
The party’s other MP from Batticaloa Govindam Karunakaran has not commented on the common candidate who hails from the same district. ITAK MP from Batticaloa Shanakkiyan Rasamanickam has generally thrown his weight behind Sumanthiran on party and public issues.
A Tamil nationalist candidate in Sri Lanka’s presidential elections is not unprecedented.
In the 2010 presidential election M K Shivajilingam, a former MP from Jaffna district had contested as an independent and secured less than 10,000 votes, in which Mahinda Rajapaksa riding on the euphoria of a war victory convincingly won over his friend turned-foe former Army chief Sarath Fonseka by nearly two million votes.
The only Tamil who got a significant number of votes in a Presidential election was Kumar Ponnambalam – father of Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam – when he contested the 1982 polls against the sitting President J R Jayawardane and secured 173,934 votes. That election was the first after the introduction of the Executive Presidency system introduced by J R Jayawardane.
By 8 August, 24 candidates have placed their deposits to contest the elections. None of them are Tamil. Sri Lanka’s presidential election is due to be held on 21 September 2024.
