{"id":248393,"date":"2026-08-10T21:47:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T16:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=248393"},"modified":"2026-08-11T04:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T23:29:09","slug":"president-dissanayake-tamil-speaking-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/president-dissanayake-tamil-speaking-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"President Dissanayake & Tamil Speaking Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Rajan Philips<\/a>\u00a0\u2013<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Rajan Philips<\/p><\/div>\n

Two weeks after their first gathering in Colombo, on July 13th<\/sup>, the six political parties of the \u2018Tamil speaking people\u2019 had an audience with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Monday, August 3rd<\/sup> last week. The meeting was far more informal than all the structured discussions of the past that led to pacts, agreements and constitutional amendments \u2013 involving the state and the Tamil speaking people. Yet there is something mildly historic about this powwow that may turn out to be significant depending on what follow up actions will be taken by the President and the six political parties after their first meeting. More immediately for the President, the meeting with Tamil speaking political parties would have come as a reprieve after all the political badgering the government has been receiving over prison riots and judges\u2019 retirement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The inaugural gathering included Rishad Bathiudeen, leader of the Sri Lanka People\u2019s Congress; Rauff Hakeem, leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress; Jeevan Thondaman, leader of the Ceylon Workers\u2019 Congress; Mano Ganesan, leader of the Tamil Progressive Alliance; M. A. Sumanthiran, General Secretary of ITAK; and Selvam Adaikkalanathan of the Democratic Tamil National Alliance. ITAK\u2019s Shanakiyan Rasamanickam was nominated as coordinator of the six-party initiative.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Three Issues<\/b><\/p>\n

The meeting of political parties representing the Tamil speaking Muslims, Malaiyaka Tamils and Tamils of the North and East, marks their first formal gathering in recent years. Their stated agreement as has been reported is \u201cto establish a common platform to discuss shared concerns, exchange views and build consensus on the issues facing their communities, bringing together the Tamils of the North-East, the Malaiyaka Tamils of the hill country and Muslims across the island.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group has identified three main issues that are important to their three communities, namely, constitutional reform, provincial council elections, and land issues. In their joint statement entitled\u00a0\u201cTamil-speaking Political Parties Agree to Establish a Common Platform to Work Together on Matters of Common Concern,\u201d<\/i>\u00a0the group highlighted the NPP\u00a0 <\/span>government\u2019s pre-election pledge to introduce a new constitution; its promise to conduct provincial council elections within an year of the parliamentary election in November 2024; and the urgency for the government to engage with the people grappling with land issues in the north and east and in the central province.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The focus of group\u2019s meeting with President Dissanayake was also on these three issues. Although no timeline commitments were made, it is worth noting that the President reiterated his and the NPP\u2019s commitment to abolish the executive presidency and to replace it with \u201ca system of governance that is clearly accountable to Parliament.\u201d On the provincial council elections, the President parried the ball to the parliamentary committee that is looking into the matter and promised to follow up with the committee. On the land question, the President again confirmed the government\u2019s commitment to resolving land related issues both in the Northern Province and the Central highlands.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As general background, the President reminded the Tamil speaking political leaders that the government is laying the foundation where finally Sri Lankans can also find other Sri Lankans regardless of whether they are Sinhalese, Tamils or Muslims. He further reminded them that the country has been \u201cfree of ethnic unrest during the government\u2019s tenure.\u201d<\/p>\n

That might be a stretch since the NPP government has not been in power long enough to justify that claim, but it must be acknowledged that this government is not in the business of fomenting ethnic unrest for political mileage. That was the business model of practically every other government after independence. The previous governments were mostly different from one another only in the degree of communal mischiefs and not in eschewing them altogether. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is reasonable to ask as to why the Tamil speaking leaders, even the ITAK, did not bring up the matter of Chemmani and other mass graves with the President in their meeting. This was a missed opportunity from the standpoint of the victims of mass graves and their families. This government has facilitated positive progress in the investigation of mass graves, missing persons and in addressing other postwar grievances. Every opportunity should be used by the Tamil speaking leaders to encourage the government to continue with ongoing initiatives and not let them peter out.<\/p>\n

Tamil Speaking Politics<\/b><\/p>\n

Besides the powwow with the President, the new grouping of Tamil Speaking Political organizations leaders has raised questions about its purpose, who is included and who is excluded, its electoral intentions, and its relationship with the government and the main opposition. There have also been observations about the inherent contradictions within the group on constitutional matters, especially devolution, provincial councils and the chimera of a North-East re-merger.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At their first news conference, the Tamil speaking leaders were apparently at pains to highlight the limits of their common platform, insist that they are not an electoral alliance, affirm that they would pursue devolution within an undivided Sri Lanka, and assert that they are neither pro-opposition nor anti-government. That is post-modernism in Sri Lankan politics. Questions, observations and hesitations aside, the very idea of a common platform of the Tamil Speaking People is timely, positive and progressive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not surprisingly the first welcome sign for the Tamil speaking common platform came from the inimitable JVP veteran and NPP Minister, K.D. Lalkantha. The Minister has called \u201cthe unity of Tamil-speaking political parties [is] a good development for seeking solutions to the fundamental problems of the Tamil people.\u201d He then took a jab at the opposition, blaming\u00a0 <\/span>the ineffectiveness of the Leader of the Opposition as the reason for the Tamil speaking parties seeking unity among themselves rather than being in an opposition alliance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not many in the current parliament may know this, but the concept of a Tamil speaking people was patented by the old Federal Party, aka Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), in the 1950s. It caused early excitement, got lost along the way and\u00a0 <\/span>became an easy prey for Tamil separatism. Ironically, the Federal Party\u2019s concept of the Tamil Speaking People was not a federal concept but a unitary concept. Today\u2019s manifestation of the Tamil Speaking collective is not at all unitary and totally federal. It is centred on not one party, but six \u2013 two from each community. It is also symptomatic of the territorial and demographic changes within each community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The northeast or Sri Lankan Tamils are no longer one of the two \u2018major communities\u2019 in the island, the way the early 20th<\/sup> century Ceylon Tamil forefathers fancied themselves to be. There was a Tamil diaspora then, there is a different Tamil diaspora now and the latter has grown at the expense of their natal brethren \u2013 considerably depleting the social and economic significances of the Tamils at the time of independence. The political and economic challenges are also different from what they were post-independence to what they are now – postwar. The terms over which the war was waged are no longer relevant to the terms on which postwar lives have to be rebuilt. The Tamil diaspora has the luxury of living politically in the Sri Lankan past and economically in the more prosperous present of their new countries. This luxury is not available to Tamils living in the north and east. They have to reimagine their politics to overcome the precarity of their subsistence. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Muslims and the Malaiyaka Tamils have come of age in their own separate ways as ethnonationalist coexistences within an island union. Muslims are geographically more dispersed but they are sufficiently concentrated in the east to make any idea of a north-east re-merger a political non-starter. Sooner the Tamil political leaders come to term with this reality, the better for their people. In that sense, the new Tamil Speaking Common Platform could be the consociational forum where consensus could be forged over contentious issues, including the north-east re-merger issue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>For all the citizenship suffering and political privations that they had to go through for over 150 years, the Malaiyaka Tamils are finally beginning to enjoy the benefits of citizenship and representation in politics and society. The plantation economy that the estate Tamil workers produced and were in turn reproduced by it, is now a whole different system. It remains a major but proportionately reduced contributor to the national GDP, but the main platform of plantation production is not the company owned estates but tea small holdings both in tea production and in employment.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The rubric of Malaiyaka Tamils, that the NPP government has officially recognized, encompasses not just the planation workers and their families but a growing community of professionals, civil servants, diplomats, teachers, general state employees, and business owners. Yet as M. Vamadevan, the well known Malaiyaka Tamil civil servant and an accomplished Peradeniya student of AJ Wilson and H.A. de S. Gunasekera, has perceptively observed, despite all the changes the plantation workers remain \u201cthe mainstay\u201d of the Malaiyaka Tamil community. The mainstay also bears the brunt of landlessness and the unresolved ownership of the wretchedly historic line rooms where generations of estate workers were born and raised. Not surprisingly, land and housing on the estates along with the land problems in the Northern Province featured prominently at the presidential powwow.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Land Question<\/b><\/p>\n

The current manifestation of land politics as one of three important issues on which six different political parties are able to form a common Tamil speaking platform – is another generational shift in politics from the four basic demands advocated by the old ITAK\/Federal Party. The four demands were for language parity, regional councils, Malaiyaka Tamil citizenship and ceasing land colonisation. President JR Jayewardene\u2019s 13th<\/sup> Amendment addresses three of them \u2013 language, devolution and land, while JRJ and President Premadasa separately resolved the citizenship question. So, there has been legislative progress on these matters, in fact, quite significant progress. Only the implementation of these initiatives has been tardy and inconsistent. With the exception of citizenship and language, President AKD and the NPP have unfinished tasks on devolution and land.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The task on devolution spans both constitutional reform and the Provincial Councils. The latter can be addressed quite swiftly if the President were to commit to an election date \u2013 say before when, and the parliamentary committee can get its act together to meet the deadline. The Election Commission is apparently all ready and is only waiting for the nod from the government. That is not the way election timing should be. Perhaps fixing unalterable election dates \u2013 specifying the month and day of the week every five years for all elections \u2013 would be a commendable constitutional reform.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the constitution itself, both President AKD and ITAK\u2019s\u00a0 <\/span>M.A. Sumanthiran agreeingly spoke about the need for a national dialogue and consensus on a new constitution. Both are needed but there is no need to keep reinventing the same wheel over and over again. The country has been having dialogues and consultations from the time Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected to office in 1994. Both AKD and Sumanthiran are intimately aware of what changes are required to provisions of the constitution. Experts and professionals who worked on them are still around.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All the government has to do is to set up a Task Force to produce yet another draft in six months. That would be generous time considering the amount of work that has gone into this over three decades. All that should be counted as dialogue and consultation, and there is no need for another merry go round. Once a draft is done, Parliament can take a few months to deliberate and reach reasonable consensus (no more daylight burning of draft copies). The Supreme Court will then have its say and a new Constitution could be ready for ratification by the people at the next general election. That would be the referendum \u2013 the mother of all consultations.<\/p>\n

The land question needs a different treatment \u2013 political will and administrative persistence. The August 3 meeting recognized the regional differences on land \u2013 the plantations and the northeast provinces. In the former, there is the NPP\u2019s own framework \u2013 the Hatton Declaration \u2013 to guide future actions. The NPP\u2019s eight point declaration, delivered on October 15th<\/sup>, 2023, to commemorate the 200th<\/sup> anniversary of the arrival of Malaiyaka Tamils in Sri Lanka, is both a historic and a unique commitment for a national political party in Sri Lanka. Specific to land and housing, the Hatton Declaration envisages the distribution of abandoned estate lands among the plantation residents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Land politics in the north and east is an administrative quagmire involving more than a handful of state agencies. Besides the military, the Mahaweli Authority, the Archaeology Department and the Departments of Forests, Forest Conservation, Wildlife and Coast Conservation \u2013 all have their politico-bureaucratic fingers in the land pie. Even after the election of the NPP government in November 2024, state officials found a way to issue, on March 28th<\/sup> 2025, a new Gazette Notification No. 2430\/25, under Section 4 of the Land Settlement Ordinance, targeting 5,900 acres of land in the Mullaitivu, Jaffna, Mannar and Kilinochchi Districts and notifying that they would be sequestered as State property unless claims to ownership are made within three months of the gazette date!<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Mr. Sumanthiran petitioned the Supreme Court and a bench of three judges, Yasantha Kodagoda PC, Sampath Abeykoon, and Sampath Wijeratne, issued a stay order suspending the Gazette Notification until judicial review was completed. The judiciary has evolved a long way in the post 13th<\/sup> Amendment era \u2013 far more than the political and administrative departments of the state. The NPP government would do well to leave the judiciary alone and look elsewhere for likely saboteurs of its agenda.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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