A View From Somewhere Near Kilinochchi
Kath Noble
Campaigning for the Northern Provincial Council was so miserable that I decided to spend election day as far away from politicians as possible.
Both the UPFA and the TNA disappointed. Two months ago, I wrote a piece saying how bright the future would be if the totally useless discourse of patriots versus traitors could be done away with, as seemed to be happening with the TNA having nominated Justice Wigneswaran as its chief ministerial candidate and the UPFA talking of putting forward Daya Master. But within days of publication, the UPFA had done a u-turn and declared that no former members of the LTTE would be included in its list, leaving it free to equate the TNA with the LTTE and argue that a TNA victory was bound to lead to the establishment of a separate state.
The TNA behaved no better, doing its best to restore the links with the LTTE that it had so successfully severed during the nomination process, with Justice Wigneswaran going to the extent of calling Prabhakaran a hero – very heroic, wasn’t it, shooting people who weren’t willing to die shielding him from defeat?
As I watched television the night before the election, almost every other sentence referred to the LTTE.
Yet there is no such organisation in Sri Lanka today.
What can be found are Tamils, and they are worse off as a community than they were three decades ago. The LTTE failed them, whether they realise it or not, and it is up to those of us who care about the country to ensure that the TNA does not do the same.
I am hopeful, but the election campaign was a reminder of how dangerous politics can be.
With that in mind, I spent election day trying to understand what life is like for the people who suffered the most in the war.
Because it is this same group who will suffer if the TNA cannot sustain the peace.
A couple of around the same age as my parents welcomed me for the weekend in their home a few miles outside Kilinochchi. Read More
