Sri Lanka1977 Election & the Mandate for Secession
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In 1977, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), then the representative party of the Tamils, declared in its Election Manifesto: “… the TULF seeks in the General Election the mandate of the Tamil nation to establish an independent, sovereign, secular, socialist state of Tamil Eelam that includes all the geographically contiguous areas that have been the traditional homeland of the Tamil-speaking people… [Full Text]. In the ensuing election, the TULF contested in 22 electorates (electoral districts) in the Northern and the Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka (Tamil homelands) and won in eighteen [See Tables I & II]. With these 18 Parliamentary seats, it became the second largest party in the Sri Lankan parliament. In these two provinces, widely recognized as the traditional homelands of the Tamil people in the island, there were 24 electorates in 1977. The TULF did not contest in two of them, both in the Eastern Province – Amparai and Seruwila – because they were acknowledged ‘Sinhala majority’ electorates. The areas covered by these two electorates were not always ‘Sinhala majority’ areas. State sponsored colonization of the Tamil homelands to alter the ethnic composition in the Tamil homelands was particularly successful in the Eastern Province. As a result, a very small Sinhala presence in the Tamil homelands in the ancient (Purana) Sinhala villages became viable electoral districts. According to government statistics the Sinhala presence in this province mushroomed from 4.5% in 1921 to 24.9% in 1981; i.e. from 8,744 persons in 1921 to 243,358 in 1981 [See Table III]. The TULF chose not to contest these two electorates for obvious reasons. However, in spite of this state engineered hindrance, the TULF went on to win 18 seats in 22 electorates it contested, and thereby obtained a Tamil mandate for a ‘Separate State of Tamil Eelam.’ The Mandate – A ThornThis clear mandate, that the TULF won, fair-and-square, has been a thorn in the side of the Sinhala establishment. The newly elected Sinhala President, Junius Jayewardene, soon after the elections, took revenge by unleashing mob violence against ALL TAMILS – regardless of whether or not they voted in this electoral challenge. Tamils who lived in the south and even the hill-country Tamils, who took no part in the TULF election victory, were not spared. British Parliamentarians, Sir John Foster, David Astor, Louis Blom-Cooper, Dingle Foot, Robert Birley, James Fawcett and Michael Scott observed: “A tragedy is taking place in Sri Lanka: the political conflict following upon the recent elections, is turning into a racial massacre. It is estimated by reliable sources that between 250 and 300 Tamil citizens have lost their lives and over 40,000 made homeless... (The Tamils) have now lost confidence in their treatment by the Sinhalese majority and are calling for a restoration of their separate national status... [The Times (UK); 20th September 1977] The Challenges to the MandateSinhala people have made several attempts to challenge the validity of the 1977 Tamil Mandate for a Separate Tamil Eelam, and they are still at it. Just three months after this historic mandate, a Sinhala priest, Fr. Tissa Balasuriya, in an article published in the now defunct Tribune [1 October 1977] said, “It is necessary to examine the claim for a separatist Tamil Eelam. Did the July elections give the TULF a mandate to demand or fight for Eelam. Definitely not!” He then went into a tortuous, but futile, statistical analysis of the votes cast in each electorate to prove his point. Now 24 years later, yet another Sinhalese writer, Neville Ladduwahetty, is at it again to invalidate the 1977 Tamil mandate. In an article titled ‘Fallout on Sri Lanka from Attack on America’ [The Island; 10 October 2001], he delves into a statistical analysis of this election (again!) to disprove the 1977 electoral mandate for Tamil Eelam. Analyzing election results with a fine toothcomb is a futile exercise, as we in America found out in the 2000 presidential election. Looking at each vote and trying to figure out the ‘intent’ of each voter (remember the ‘chads’ in Florida) is an undertaking that leads nowhere. The system is what matters. The United States elects its presidents through a system of electoral colleges, and George W. Bush became the 43rd US President under the system, even though he lost the popular (majority) vote. Similarly, the first-past-the-post system in existence in Sri Lanka in 1977 gave the TULF the mandate it sought for Tamil Eelam. The discussion should end right here. Anything more is a slippery slope. Detailed analysis of ‘voter’s intent’ would involve answering a number of vital questions. Did each voter in northeast Sri Lanka think of only one issue (the mandate for Tamil Eelam) when he/she voted in the 1977 elections? Does a ‘pro-lifer’ in the US who votes for the Democratic Party have to renounce his/her beliefs on the abortion issue? Did the people in Nallur who voted for SLFP, the then governing party (there were 1,042 of them), vote against Tamil Eelam, or were they thinking of some personal gain, such as employment for their sons and daughters, or a ‘promotion’ for their nephews and nieces? Or were they thinking of fertilizers for their farms or baby-food and medicine for their children, which were all (and are still being) distributed by political patronage? Were the voters aware of the significance of the first-past-the-post system? Could some have cast their votes, in the knowledge that a pro-Eelam candidate would be elected under this system anyway (which is what he/she wanted), but wanted to register a protest vote for another totally different reason? How would they vote today is another question worth reflection. That is, of course, if the same voters were still alive after the Sinhala army assaults (bombing, shelling, torture, rape, mass-murder, etc.), and if they could still vote without intimidation, and also if their votes had not already been cast by someone else! Slippery slope indeed. The Current ChallengeMr. Ladduwahetty was challenging another Sinhalese writer (Dr. Sumanasiri Liyanage), who just wanted to consider ‘partition’ as an option. Dr. Liyanage’s statement that has irked Mr. Ladduwahetty the most is: “In the first parliamentary election after Vaddukoddai Convention of the TULF, the TULF had won a landslide victory in the Northern Province and significant support in the Eastern Province”. Dr. Liyanage’s statement in his article is based on the fact that the TULF won all 14 seats in the northern province, and 4 out of the 8 it contested in the eastern province, loosing two others with very narrow margins [see Tables I & II]. Mr. Ladduwahetty downplays the TULF's landslide victory in the northern province, and distills his argument to the percentage of votes TULF received in the Eastern Province. His primary logic is that everyone who voted against the TULF voted against Tamil Eelam, even if they had other priorities in their electoral decisions! Convenient, but defies all logic. A glaring but not the only example is the fact that there were independent candidates, some of who contested the 1977 elections as independents[i] on a ticket for ‘A Separate Tamil State’ and polled as much as 25% of votes in some districts, but lost the election. By the ‘Ladduwahetty logic’ these votes should be counted as anti-TULF, and by extension anti-Eelam! With his intellectual dishonesty, Mr. Ladduwahetty then proceeds to chop up the Tamil homelands into administrative districts and in a convoluted logic, excludes three ‘high Tamil concentration districts’ to show that in the other four districts Tamil concentration is less. There is no shortage on malicious people like him in this world. Many are still trying to prove that the Jewish Holocaust never happened! A Tamil proverb describes such efforts well: “trying to hide a whole pumpkin in a plate of rice!” The fact of the matter is that Northern and the Eastern Provinces in the island of Sri Lanka are the traditional homelands of the Tamil people. The TULF went to polls in these two provinces in 1977 (the last free and fair elections in these two provinces), and won 18 seats in 22 electorates. The mandate sought, and secured by the TULF, is for a ‘Separate Tamil State’. The mandate still stands.
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| [i] Votes received by smaller parties and independent candidates who also stood for an independent Tamil Eelam: Thamilar Suya Aatchi Kazhagam (10,740 votes), Tamil Eela GG Congress (10,810 votes), Mr. Veeravagu – (Ind. - Pt. Pedro - 3,065 votes), Mr. Sandrasegari – (Ind. - Mullaitivu - 7,362 votes), Mr. John Mark – (Ind. - Mannar - 663 votes), Mr. S. Nadarajah – (Ind. - Chavakachcheri - 111 votes) | |||
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SANGAM RESEARCH [16 October 2001] |
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