TULF, EPDP may dominate other Tamil parties

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, OCT. 7. After nearly two decades of liberation struggle against the Sri Lankan state, more and more Tamil politicians seem to have accepted that they now have little option but to work within the space offered by the country's Sinhala-dominated polity.

That is evident from the number of Tamil aspirants in the race for the upcoming parliamentary elections. A record number of 965 candidates, representing a plethora of political parties and independent groups, the majority of them Tamil, are vying for 31 seats in the embattled north-east Sri Lanka. However, in the poll that will take place on October 10, only two of them, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), are expected to win a respectable share of votes and seats.

The two parties have diametrically-opposed views. The idealistic TULF wants a ceasefire and negotiations with the LTTE and a long- term political solution that will be a credible alternative to Eelam, a stand that has placed it in headlong confrontation with the state. The pragmatic EPDP is for a military rout of the LTTE as the only way to bring about lasting peace for the Tamil people, making it an ally of the Government.

The TULF is unquestionably Jaffna's GOP and has an almost proprietorial attitude towards the voters. It enjoyed the mass support of Tamils in the late Seventies and the early Eighties and can still claim a base in the north-east, particularly because of its avowed eschewal of arms all these years. It supporters are mainly the educated elite.

This was nowhere more obvious than in the results of the 1998 local elections in the Jaffna peninsula, where the TULF won in the only two places that it contested, including Jaffna town. The people of Jaffna may still support the its idealism and moderate politics, but increasingly they realise that to see them through the travails of war, they need a party like the EPDP that has utilised its proximity with the Government to dole out jobs, make travel arrangements, facilitate phone calls and dispense other small favours that make life easier for people trapped in the peninsula.

``People need somebody to look after their everyday needs in this situation. Only we can do this because of our co- operation with the Government,'' said Mr. Douglas Devananda, leader of the EPDP. In the last election, the EPDP won nine out of the 10 seats in Jaffna in an election that has since been acknowledged as fraudulent.

The peninsula was controlled by the LTTE, but the EPDP won seats on the basis of a 2.97 per cent voter turn-out, mainly in a group of islets off the peninsula, which were under its control. The TULF did not contest in the poll. The SLMC took the 10th seat.

With those nine seats, the EPDP opened out a system of patronage in Jaffna district that has today made it the envy of the TULF. In this election, the TULF has shed its fear of the LTTE in Jaffna and returned to claim its share of the votes.

Both parties seem evenly poised in Jaffna, but the TULF's clout in Batticaloa, where it had three seats in the last election, may place it ahead of EPDP in the final tally.

This election may well mark the demise of a number of other groups that played a role in the Tamil militant movement in the past before deciding to give up arms and joining the democratic mainstream. The PLOTE, which is contesting with the virtually- defunct EROS, may not win even the three seats from Vavuniya that it did in 1994. Its leader, Mr. Dharmalingam Sithadthan, has an outside chance of being elected from Jaffna, where he is contesting this time.

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