Is it time for Tamil politicians to shift gears?

The recent announcement by Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) MP M.A. Sumanthiran that the Party would support SJB candidate Sajith Premadasa in the upcoming Presidential election has brought to head the deep divisions within the Tamil polity of the country. The decision had been reached by a majority vote but soon after Sumanthiran’s announcement at a press conference in Vavuniya, some ITAK members voiced opposition to the decision by the CC to support Premadasa.

At the meeting, the ITAK CC had also decided not to extend support to the Tamil common candidate P. Ariyanenthiran who is also a member of the Party and has the blessings of the party leader Jaffna District MP S. Sritharan. He was overseas when the CC met but had been informed by letter that he would be absent for the meeting.

Sritharan was elected ITAK leader in January beating Sumanthiran who also contested for the post. He replaced Mavai Senathirajah, a senior Tamil politician, who has been giving mixed signals about the ITAK decision to support the SJB leader. His statements have been vacillating from acceding to the ITAK CC decision to saying the decision was forced by Sumanthiran and his protégé ITAK Batticaloa District MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), formed in 2001, under the leadership of the late R. Sampanthan and of which the ITAK was the largest constituent party too is now fragmented. ITAK which once dominated politics in the North does not command the kind of following which it once had with several new parties making inroads to win over voters.

In the Eastern Province too, Tamil voters are divided among several political parties and there is no longer an en bloc Tamil vote in either of the Tamil dominated areas in the North and Eastern Provinces; hence, endorsing one candidate no longer means that the entirety of the Tamil vote would go his way.

Tamil politics has suffered with a lack of able political leaders, many of them losing their lives long before their time to violence. This is true of the Sinhala and Muslim political sphere as well. Sampanthan was the last of the dominant Tamil leaders, someone who commanded the respect of his people as well as other politicians across the board but since his demise there is a vacuum that is unlikely to be filled anytime soon.

M.A. Sumanthiran was a close confidant of the late TNA leader and rose quickly in rank within ITAK/TNA since entering Parliament as a National List MP in 2010. He contested the 2015 general election and won a seat from the Jaffna District and was re-elected in 2020.

Sumanthiran, like Sampanthan, represents the moderates among Tamil politicians representing the North and has not restricted himself to regional issues. Instead, he’s being front and centre on several national issues. In 2015 he was actively involved in bringing about constitutional changes soon after Maithripala Sirisena was elected President and also played an active role behind the scenes to get Dullas Alahapperuma elected president during the parliament vote in July 2022. However, in the latter instance, several TNA MPs went their own way and backed Ranil Wickremesinghe to be president. 

No doubt Sumanthrian is a sweetheart of many in the Colombo circuit and could easily find enough support in the Colombo district to enter parliament if he decides to join a national party without sticking to a regional party. It is the tragedy of this country that some of the most talented politicians such as the late Sampanthan chose to begin and end their political careers by being perpetually in opposition. Muslim and Indian Tamils have done much for their people by being in Government. Joining a mainstream party might be the better course of action for Sumanthiran and his like-minded colleagues given that the bargaining power of regional parties is on the wane and aligning oneself to a mainstream political party can benefit both the country and the people they seek to serve.