Will Sri Lanka’s New Government Meet Tamil Political Demands?

The victory of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) coalition in Sri Lanka’s general election on November 14 was unprecedented for several reasons. First, its magnitude: the coalition secured 61.56 percent of the total valid votes and 159 of the 225 seats in Parliament, the first time a coalition has won a two-thirds majority since the proportional representation electoral system was introduced in 1978. But the victory was also unprecedented in its geographic spread: The NPP won 21 of the country’s 22 electoral districts. In addition to sweeping the Sinhalese south, the coalition made major inroads into regions where the island’s ethnic minorities are predominant.

Sinhalese comprise 74.9 percent of Sri Lanka’s multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-religious population. Tamils, the second largest ethnic group, are an island-wise minority, but they comprise the overwhelming majority in the Northern Province and the Nuwara Eliya district in the central highlands. The more ethnically diverse Eastern Province has Tamils, Sinhalese, and Muslims in roughly the same proportion, with Tamils forming a substantial majority in Batticaloa district.

In the recent general elections, the Sinhalese-dominated NPP beat Tamil and Muslim political parties in four of the five electoral districts in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, and its candidates won 12 of 28 seats here.

The NPP’s impressive performance in regions that are dominated by minority groups is no small achievement, given the deep ethnic polarization of Sri Lankan society and politics post-independence.

Political parties are organized along ethnic lines, and traditionally, the Sinhalese voted for Sinhalese parties, Tamils for Tamil parties, and Muslims for Muslim parties.

The Sinhalization of the Sri Lankan state deepened the Sinhalese-Tamil ethnic conflict and culminated in a three-decade-long civil war. The civil war ended in May 2009, but the ethnic divide persisted, and Sri Lanka’s main ethnic groups continued to vote on ethnic lines.

What makes the NPP’s victory in Tamil areas all the more significant is that the JVP, which forms the NPP’s core, was once virulently and violently anti-Tamil. The NPP had no presence in the Tamil areas until recently.

Rarely have Sinhalese parties done well in areas that are home to sizable minority populations. If they did, it was with the backing of ethnic Tamil parties. This was the case with Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya in the September 21 presidential election, for example.

The NPP’s impressive performance in the recent general election is the first time that a Sinhalese party has, without the support of any Tamil or Muslim parties, emerged as the leading political party in Tamil- and Muslim-dominated areas.

Particularly significant is the NPP’s victory in the Tamil nationalist bastions of Jaffna and Vanni districts in the Northern Province. Jaffna is the political stronghold of Tamil nationalism, and the NPP won three of the six seats here, while the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), the flagbearer of Tamil nationalism, secured just one.

So, what explains the Tamil vote for the NPP?

A Jaffna journalist told The Diplomat that the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021-22 economic crisis “hit the Tamils hard” and they want solutions to problems like spiraling prices. During the election campaign, the journalist recalled, Tamil parties raised the “usual demands for full implementation of the 13th amendment, accountability for war-time atrocities and return of Tamil lands occupied by the military.” However, they failed to strike a chord with the Tamil masses who “today are more worried about their present situation than the national question.”

Still, a professor from Jaffna University warned against interpreting the general election results as “a sign of the declining appeal of Tamil nationalism.”

“Corruption, infighting, and non-performance of politicians of the established Tamil parties have made Tamil voters frustrated with these parties,” he said. “Desperate for change, they voted for the NPP as it seems to represent a different outlook and politics.” The Tamil vote, he said, is a “vote for change.” Tamils have “given the NPP a chance to address their long-standing grievances.”

Rejecting the view that the Tamil vote for the NPP marks a shift away from the Tamil nationalist demands, the professor said that it is “an outreach to the NPP to address these demands.”

So will the NPP heed the Tamil outreach by taking action on issues of long-standing concern to the minority population?

With more than a two-thirds majority in Parliament, the NPP government is in a position to amend the constitution, abolish the powerful executive presidency, and return to the Westminster-style parliamentary system. The new government can meet the long-standing Tamil demand for meaningful devolution of power to the provinces.

However, it is unlikely to do so.

Since its inception in the 1960s, the JVP has espoused a Marxist ideology with a distinct Sinhalese ultra-nationalist, even chauvinist, outlook. Indeed, it was distinctly anti-Tamil and has remained strongly opposed to any devolution of power to the Tamils. It was because of a petition filed by the JVP in 2006 that the Supreme Court demerged the Northeast Province (the North and East were merged in 1987 to meet the Tamil demand for a unified Tamil political unit).

Two obstacles stand in the way of the NPP government addressing the Tamil national question. One is that although the NPP has Tamil members, it remains a Sinhalese political entity. Sinhalese nationalist politics remain “embedded deeply in the psyche of the current leaders,” Sri Lanka expert S. I. Keethaponcalan, a professor of Conflict Resolution at Salisbury University in Maryland, told me in a recent interview.

Moreover, JVP leaders will be reluctant to antagonize their hardline Sinhalese nationalist support base. Especially at a time when they will need to implement unpopular measures recommended by the IMF to bail Sri Lanka out of its economic crisis, they will not want to trigger the ire of Sinhalese masses.

Consequently, the new government will not take bold steps to address the Tamil national question.

Keethaponcalan said that he did not “expect the government to provide any political relief or political rights to the Tamils.” Instead, it would offer the Tamils “economic incentives.”

Indeed, during his election campaign in Jaffna, Sri Lankan President and JVP chief Anura Kumara Dissanayake promised job creation and industrial revival in the Tamil areas. Tamil lands currently under state control would be returned, he said.

But he was silent on the question of power devolution to the Tamils.

Keethaponcalan said the new government would “try to develop a common Sri Lankan identity and expect the Tamils to shed their identity politics.”

Since the end of the war, successive governments ducked the key issue of political rights of Tamils and instead offered them economic incentives, which Tamils rejected.

Will it be different this time around?