Don’t Ignore The Role Of Minor Opposition Parties
Dr. Thrishantha Nanayakkara
I am not a political analyst of any sort nor an academic with expert knowledge in politics. However, this is the time all Sri Lankans try to make sense out of the country’s political history to take informed decisions. I just thought of sharing my specific thoughts about the role of the minor political parties. The glare of main political parties often makes us overlook the role of minor opposition parties in the Sri Lankan parliament. We often forget that their composition and principles indicate major concerns limited to certain groups of citizens, which if neglected, can lead to social catastrophes even the majorities have to face.
I start with 1977 – 1989 parliament shown in figure 1, because it was based on a new constitution that introduced an executive presidency while maintaining the republic introduced n 1972. In this parliament, United National Party (UNP) had 5/6 power in the parliament and the opposition was Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) with 18 seats from the North and East. The major league Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) was reduced to 8 seats. President JR Jayewardene simply ignored the opposition and did whatever possible to intimidate them. For instance, the leader of SLFP lost her civil rights, and rule of law was humiliated. When some judges were publicly stoned by goons, the president simply said – “oh, it is people enjoying their democratic rights!”. TULF could not stop the parliament from passing laws to standardize education that introduced a quota for each district to send students to universities, worsening the Sinhala/Tamil media based standardization introduced in 1972. This benefited most parts of the South, but it was a massive blow to students in the North that had a good education system capable of sending larger numbers to National universities. This standardization started strong sentiments among Tamil students and professionals living across the World to intensify the demand for a separate state where Tamils can take care of their own affairs centered on a good education system.
When I look back at this era, I find it hard to believe that JR Jayawardane administration chose a socialist approach of introducing quotas for education, when he represented a more capitalistic party that should have instead developed the school system in the South and broadened opportunities in universities. However, the relevance to the topic is that the opposition led by TULF was too weak to resist these moves. It only led to a loss of trust in democratic politics among the emerging radical Tamil youth.Read More