LTTE, the shadow candidate in elections

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, NOV. 4. Without fielding a single candidate of its own, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is emerging as a key player in Sri Lanka's December 5 parliamentary elections.

The LTTE has made no comment so far about the election and has not openly declared its support for, or opposition to, any party or candidate. But as the campaign picks up, it is becoming evident that it is, what the daily Island recently described as, the ``silent candidate'' in the election.

Word has gone out to voters in the north and east that the alliance of four Tamil parties - the Tamil United Liberation Front, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation, the All Ceylon Tamil Congress and a ginger group of the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front - has the tacit backing of the LTTE.

The main election plank of the alliance is that the government should hold talks with the LTTE for a political solution to the ethnic conflict encompassing the right to self- determination and a Tamil homeland.

None of the four parties concerned have denied reports that the alliance is a proxy of the LTTE, and that the group's leadership has vetted its candidates.

In fact, they are doing everything to ensure that they are seen as the LTTE's chosen ones, with the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) going as far as to say that it backs the LTTE's ``freedom struggle''.

While the leaders of the alliance maintain they are backing neither the People's Alliance nor the United National Party (UNP)-led United National Front (UNF), they are seen as closer to the latter, especially after their crucial role in Opposition efforts to topple the Kumaratunga government.

This had led to the inference that the LTTE wants a change of government. Anti-Kumaratunga pronouncements by the LTTE have backed the theory, leading the PA to accuse the UNP of a ``secret pact'' with the rebels.

The UNP leader, Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, has dismissed the allegation as the ``usual election song'' of the PA, saying that his party's policy on peace talks with the LTTE was no different from the government. That has not put down the PA.

Inaugurating her coalition's election campaign at Anuradhapura on Friday, the President, Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga, accusing Mr. Wickremesinghe of plotting with the separatist LTTE to defeat her government, said the election would decide the fate of the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the country.

But it is far from clear what the LTTE really wants out of this election. In fact, the suicide bombing last week, and the disclosure that the bomber's original target was the Prime Minister, might affect the UNP campaign for the majority Sinhala votes by adding grist to the PA mill.

Also, while the LTTE has signalled a disinclination to deal with a PA government, it has nowhere indicated a willingness to sit down for negotiations with the UNP.

According to a Tamil politician outside the alliance, if the LTTE does favour a change of government, it might be due more to the belief that a new dispensation will lead to useful political and military concessions than a desire to open peace talks with a UNP or UNP-led government.

What seems clearer is that the LTTE's main aim is to counter the growing influence of the Eelam People's Democratic Party in Jaffna peninsula, which poses a challenge to its claim of being the sole representative of the Tamil people.

The four-party alliance might assist in this task by preventing a fragmentation of the non-EPDP vote in the north.

Commenting on the involvement of the LTTE in the elections the Sunday Times said today that despite its campaign to secede from Sri Lanka, it also seemed ``pathologically against the idea of being marginalised from the affairs of the Sri Lankan state''.

Exiled leader allowed to return

PTI reports:

Sri Lanka has allowed a reclusive Marxist leader living in London for the last decade to return to the country to campaign for the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna ahead of the parliamentary election.

A new passport was despatched to the leader, Mr. Somawansa Amarasinghe, a few days ago, but it was valid for travel only between Britain and Sri Lanka, press reports said today.

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