the wigneswaran factor sampanthan’s master-stroke

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The Wigneswaran Factor: Sampanthan’s Master-Stroke Photo courtesy  Lanka Standard Groundviews Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka-16 Jul, 2013In this country, it is a rarity to witness really smart politics on strategic issues. We have just done so and got two breakthrough moves on the same issue. The first was by President Rajapaksa who chose to go ahead with the election to the Northern Provincial Council and have a meeting with Mr Sampanthan, the TNA leader. The second was by Mr Sampanthan who worked hard to persuade his coalition to field Justice Wigneswaran as the Chief Ministerial candidate. Justice Wigneswar an is a candidate that every Tamil can be proud of to have as his and her representative , and may make a Chief Minister that most Sri Lankans of whichever ethnicity or religion can be proud of. In fact he will have the salutary effect of raising the bar of performance for every chief minister and Sri Lankan politician throughout the island. The choice of Justice Wigneswaran illustrates the kind of strategic thinking that is needed in politics when fundamental issues are at stake; strategic thinking that is

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The Wigneswaran Factor: Sampanthan’sMaster-StrokePhoto courtesy  Lanka Standard

Groundviews

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka-16 Jul, 2013In this country, it is a rarity to witness really smart

politics on strategic issues. We have just done so and got two breakthrough moves on

the same issue. The first was by President Rajapaksa who chose to go ahead with the

election to the Northern Provincial Council and have a meeting with Mr Sampanthan,

the TNA leader. The second was by Mr Sampanthan who worked hard to persuade his

coalition to field Justice Wigneswaran as the Chief Ministerial candidate.

Justice Wigneswaran is a candidate that every Tamil can be proud of to have as his and

her representative, and may make a Chief Minister that most Sri Lankans of whichever

ethnicity or religion can be proud of. In fact he will have the salutary effect of raising

the bar of performance for every chief minister and Sri Lankan politician throughout

the island.

The choice of Justice Wigneswaran illustrates the kind of strategic thinking that is

needed in politics when fundamental issues are at stake; strategic thinking that is

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 willing to stand up to and sacrifice more obvious ethno-populist passions and

pressures for the defence of vital interests of the entirety of the people and place one

represents. The choice further shows a capacity on the part of Mr Sampanthan (and his

able young supporter Mr Sumanthiran) to think through those strategic interests in a

manner that transcends baser ethno-populist sentiment. In short, Mr Sampanthan and

Mr Sumanthiran have accurately understood strategic Tamil interests which they have

not confused with the lowest common denominator of Tamil sentiments.

Justice Wigneswaran is a symbol of Tamil ‘soft power’, which is being depleted in the

Sinhala society and most certainly the State. If handled correctly he can become a

symbol of the soft power of Sri Lanka as a society and a country. The Sinhala

Establishment has to get its head around the fact that though the Tigers were utterly 

defeated, the Tamil community has not been cowed and has bounced back politically.

One of the reasons for this resilience and recovery is the continued availability of an

educated elite, literate in an international language (English)—a sociological resource

 which has been depleted on the Sinhala side by and driven into alienation or exile by 

the state of suffocation imposed by the State. On the Tamil side the English educated

elite is still available for politics and public service and is welcomed by Tamil society 

 while on the Sinhala side, the public welcomes the incorporation of the elite but the

dominant monolingual petty bourgeoisie which monopolises the state apparatus, does

not. The choice of Justice Wigneswaran as Chief Ministerial candidate shows firstly,

that the Tamil professional elite is still intact and willing to engage in politics and

secondly, that the Sinhala state which has shed the equivalent human resources will

find it difficult to compete in the regional and international arena.

It is not however a zero-sum game in which Tamil interests win and Sinhala interests

lose. Indeed the choice they have pushed for, Justice Wigneswaran is the best chance

to make the 13thamendment work and is therefore the best hope for North-South

reintegration on the basis of frankness, dignity and mutual respect.

 Whether or not it was intended as such – and I suspect, not—the choices made by 

Mahinda Rajapaksa (to hold the election) and R. Sampathan (to field Justice

 Wigneswaran) can be considered as complementary, and when taken together, offer

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the best chance for political reconciliation. It could mark the beginning of winning the

peace and building a new Sri Lankan nation.

If both sides get it wrong though, it could mark the end of the road for a united Sri

Lanka.

The single most important factor about the choice of Justice Wigneswaran as Chief 

Minister is that by so doing, the TNA has upped the ante and raised the potential cost

to Colombo of any unfair and peremptory dissolution of the Council. In short, by 

choosing Justice Wigneswaran, Mr Sampanthan has cleverly installed a deterrent to

arbitrary dissolution of the NPC.

Sri Lanka, it must be recalled, is haunted by the negative experience of the North

Eastern Provincial Council. One of the reasons for its failure was the personality of 

 Vardarajaperumal who was chosen as Chief Minister (despite my strenuous

representations to the EPRLF leader K Pathmanabha as well as the Indian side).

Perumal’s lack of political maturity and realism in dealing with the Sri Lankan state,

his mercurial populism and alcohol-fuelled adventurism were among the main reasons

for the mishandling of the inevitable contradictions between the periphery and the

centre.

Justice Wigneswaran is hardly a Vardarajaperumal. Educated in Colombo and a

distinguished senior representative of one of the arms of the Sri Lankan state itself, he

has long functioned in a multiethnic social universe. A dignified yet outspoken,

multilingual man, he is in the current circumstances, the best possible bridge between

North and South. He is, in sum, the TNA’s Lakshman Kadirgamar.

If the deep state is hoping to de-stabilise the elected Northern provincial council, the

security managers will have to think again. In the event of a manufactured crisis and a

creeping or dramatic coup by the capital, who would be the better interlocutor with the

 world community; who would be better able to convince the world’s capitals? The

national security fundamentalists or an erudite, reasonable, articulate ex-Supreme

Court judge?

 With Sampanthan, Sumanthiran and Wigneswaran, the fate of the Tamil community is

in the best possible democratic hands.

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I am especially gratified at the turn of events not only since I have been a supporter of 

devolution since 1984 and a Minister in the first North-eastern Provincial Council a

quarter of a century ago, but because it bears out what I told the (then) Archbishop of 

Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams in early 2007, when he called on President Rajapaksa.

There were several Cabinet Ministers, senior officials and Church personalities

including Bishop Duleep de Chickera at the meeting. I gave a brief run down on the

 war as satisfying the major criteria of Just War theory. The Archbishop of Canterbury 

challenged me with a counter question. He had been wrestling with just war theory for

about fifteen years and was concerned about a ‘just outcome’. Did I think that this war

 would lead to one and if so why and what were the chances? He queried. I replied that

the military defeat of the LTTE by the armed forces of the state would be accompanied

 by the automatic re-enfranchisement of the Tamil people. This inevitable reopening of 

electoral space and the re-enfranchisement of the Tamil voter would give the Tamil

people the leverage to re-insert their issues and demands at the very centre of Lankan

politics. The revival of a political process in those areas would enable the criteria of a

‘just outcome’ to be met to some degree while further advance towards that goal was

possible by negotiation between the state and the elected Tamil representatives. That

 was my answer, and current dynamics seem to be proving it right.

If a troika can crystallise, comprising the war-winning and pragmatic President

Rajapaksa, the TNA’s R Sampanthan and the Northern provincial council’s

 Wigneswaran, Sri Lanka may yet win the peace, 30 years after Black July 1983. With

the forces of ‘radical evil’ (as the great Goethe designated it) defeated in the North and

East but not yet in the South, it will be a harsh and bitter struggle though—and a grim,

emotive, turbulent transition. Living with and accommodating a TNA run Northern

provincial council led by Justice Wigneswaran will require and may generate a

profound shift in the collective psyche.

Justice Wigneswaran is no Alfred Duraiyappa. He will not bend the knee and tug his

forelock before the Sinhala Establishment. He is nobody’s “malli”. An interview given

to Ayesha Zuhair in 2011 reveals him to be a federalist who stands for the right of self-

determination, though he never strays into endorsing secession. What is tricky is not

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the federalism but the fact that in most parts of the world, federalists do not stand for

self –determination, though he belongs to that tendency which does. A Council led by 

him will be a counterweight to the dangerous neo-conservative surge which threatens

not merely Northern lands but Southern film making! The Northern Council with him

as Chief Minister will not be the answer to Sri Lanka’s needs but will constitute a

counterpoint which will in turn help us discover a middle path, a golden mean between

the nationalisms of the South and North. He is a challenge but the challenge he will

constitute could be a positive one; just the benign shock therapy that the Sri Lankan

state and Sinhala society need to accommodate and integrate if they are to catch up

 with the 21st century world.

Posted by Thavam