TNA’s 2020 performance: Urgent reform need of the hour

By N. Lohathayalan

Through the elections just concluded, there are many hard truths that people feel need to be accepted and have expressed as their views. In this milieu, although many political parties accept these new reformist views and feel the need for internal party restructure and reformation, the need to reform and rebuild the Tamil National Alliance feels paramount. 

The TNA secured 22 seats in the year 2004. Since then, as a result of changes in laws and alignments, the truth is that it has been impossible for the TNA to secure as many seats in Parliament. Part of the reason for this is that while in 2004 the Jaffna District was entitled to nine parliamentary seats, the number of seats from the district has been reduced to seven since then due to demographic changes. There is every chance that this will be reduced even further to six seats in the near future

The fact that the TNA which secured 16 parliamentary seats in 2015 was only able to win 10 seats from the north and east in this election is a point of challenging deficiency in its future trajectory. In particular as Jaffna and Batticaloa saw TNA seats dropping drastically, in Trincomalee the TNA Leader R. Sampanthan barely scraped through with a lead of merely 196 votes. I will make my observations from the perspective of a vote count. The TNA vote bank that exceeded 500,000 in 2015 dropped to 300,000 in the 2020 parliamentary election. In other words, the TNA has lost 200,000 voters since five years ago. 

Furthermore, in the 2020 election, both the Ilankai Thamil Arasuk Katchi’s (ITAK) Head in Jaffna and the party’s Secretary in Batticaloa were defeated in the two districts and it is important to analyse the reasons for this loss.

Flaws in the nomination process

Many reasons are being attributed for the TNA’s weakened electoral performance in the north and east. Foremost among these is the fact that the TNA has an ageing leadership. When questions are posed to the party regarding the age factor, the excuse provided by the TNA is that no matter where these leaders go, they are able to address any topic relevant to the people with experience and knowledge. 

The TNA leadership needs to recognise however, that there were terrible flaws in the nomination process. This must be accepted if any reform is to be possible. What is to be expected when the Nomination Committee responsible for interviews and deciding on candidates gave nominations to themselves? Those applying for nominations cannot be the decision makers about who gets nomination from the party. No party member seeking nominations to contest in an election should be given a seat on the nominations committee. 

The TNA presently has a person of exceptional talent as its Spokesman. There is no doubt on this matter. However these are times when we need to be able to express the Tamil people’s grievances to the Sinhalese people and make them accept the Tamil people feel the way they do. That requires a gentle manner of speaking to the Sinhalese people without hot rhetoric. But we cannot do that by deleting our Tamil history of pain and sacrifice. The experience remains an unhealed wound in the Tamil psyche as we can observe from the results of the recently concluded elections.  

If a people select 150 extremists as their leaders, the policies and positions of those 150 are necessarily acceptable to the Tamil people who chose them. However those policies and positions will not sell well among the Sinhalese, failing to generate badly needed sympathy and understanding from the people of the South.  

Representatives talking tough with bravado, create only more hatred. On the contrary what the tough-talking Tamil representatives say might make news only for a few days. It is better, as proven by the Tamil electoral results, for our representatives to refrain from discussing certain matters even if they will garner Tamil votes. A peaceable approach helps rapprochement with the Sinhalese but loses the Tamil electorate. Although Sumanthiran was returned, his vote share dropped by half. So also R. Sampanthan’s vote share as he squeaked through. Our best, softest-spoken leaders are unable to get votes, unlike the stridently vocal of our representative engaging in diatribes.

Collapse of the Tamil vote-bank

As we see it, the painful wound in the Tamil psyche being ignored has led to the collapse of the Tamil vote-bank. The strident parties picked up what the TNA lost. It was a TNA candidate, the newspaper magnate E. Saravanapan, who blew and blew into our balloon to raise it, but his own balloon burst as a result. His vote-bank was reduced as a result of his blowing hateful thoughts.

He said ‘if a brinjal has rotten parts, cut them out without throwing away the brinjal’. The statement appeared to be an attack on TNA Spokesman Sumanthiran. The very same reasons that led the TNA to give Sumanthiran a spot on the TNA National List in 2010, led to the TNA Spokesman paving the way for the TNA to lose a share of its votes. So a good portion of the TNA vote-bank is good, but the strident parts and the peaceable parts are pulling in opposite directions.

When challenging this analysis, the response is that we may be blamed for the loss in the north but by no means can the losses in the east be attributed to us. However, in today’s world what happens in one corner of America is known within the hour all over the world. In this world, the goings on in the north soon have their adverse effects in the east too. Every newspaper that comes out of the north, even before reaching the hands of northern readers by 8 a.m., reaches readers all over through electronic media. Some of our electronic media warriors do not seem to understand this simple truth.

It appears that only a few candidates and some members have worked for the growth of the party. The others have behaved as if there was no connection between them and the electoral stakes of the party. Their families did not come to vote. They did not urge others to vote. When questioned how such persons got supporters out to vote, the response from Local Government representatives and supporters, was “When they are oppressing and crushing our own candidates and electorates, do you really think we had any say in this debacle?”

Major faux pas of the TNA leadership

Beyond these matters, whether in Jaffna or in the Wanni, our leaders met us voters as well as journalists only twice. That is, they saw us only when filing their nomination papers and then in releasing their election manifesto, even in the last 10 days before voting, although all 10 leaders appeared on the same stage, they clearly showed they were differing from each other. 

This is seen as a major faux pas of the TNA leadership. When the TNA head R. Sampanthan came to Jaffna, there were only two public meetings. Even when the meetings were taken out of town centers, few were to be seen in the KKS meeting for example. This is because such meetings were so poorly organised that few even from the TNA parties knew of them in time to attend. Similarly, the candidate blown up as Udupiddy Chingam (Lion), a person appointed to be in charge of Uduppiddy “electorate” was unknown to the people of Uduppiddy. On top of that, how many of those appointed to look out for Kayts ever came there? The visits were very rare. “That is why we voted for others,” said many people.

In Kilinochchi one person tried to function as the only person in charge. “Would he accept responsibility if there is a vote-loss?” asked some people. We need to accept that he did not function to safeguard the party.

The question in the aftermath is whether the party leadership gather district – and electorate – branches and moreover the Local Government representatives, and engage in a constructive and consultative post-election analysis about the TNA strategy? Or would the leadership meet only with 20 or so persons and implement only decisions taken by these 20? Would party activists need to continue the past practice of pandering to leaders to get their ear? These are appropriate questions for the TNA and ITAK.

In these circumstances the TNA structure without reform will face the same issues in Parliament as well as in the Provincial Council Elections soon to come. If the problems and vote-erosion identified in the 2018 Local Government Elections had been rectified, we would not have been facing this situation in 2020.  If steps are not taken towards reform, even in a minimal way, the TNA which reigned supreme king in the north in 2013, it will face hung provincial and local assemblies as is the case in the Eastern Province. Radical reforms are urgently necessary to avoid this bigger debacle in waiting.

Without it, all we can only write dejected analyses like this after each election to come.