The TNA’s ‘Hardline’ Manifesto
Malinda Seneviratne
There is a time-tested formula to obtain the optimum in any engagement. It was proposed first by the All-Knowing and All-Seeing, the Buddha Siddhartha Gauthama. The doctrine is contained in two ideas: compassion and wisdom. Applicable to all, this formula offers the best instruments to dissect and respond to the manifesto recently put out by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).
Promising sun, moon, stars and everything underneath is part and parcel of manifestos. If, as Lee Kwan Yew once said, democracy in Sri Lanka is but the periodic auctioning of non-existent resources, the TNA cannot be faulted for promising the undeliverable.
The TNA manifesto pledges a commitment to a separate state in no uncertain terms. The deliverability aside, there are several reasons why such a manifesto makes sense, politically that is, for the TNA. There is no Tamil country in this world. As such, the promise has appeal, albeit to the less-critical and baser instincts of the Tamil community. It need not be a place, even if obtained, that someone in Colombo or Toronto, for example, would ever inhabit, but it is certainly an idea that is warm enough to warrant support.
Then there is also the issue of belonging. The distance between the powerful and the powerless is such that few can actually relate with heart and soul to rulers. A Sinhalese being President does not make all Sinhalese feel safer. A woman president doesn’t automatically emancipate women from patriarchal fetters. Given decades of deliberate mis-education by communalist leaders, a war where primarily Sinhala soldiers fought an outfit made of Tamils and failure to address real, felt grievances (never mind the inflations of the same), that sense of un-belonging can be expected to be more acute in a Tamil. The TNA manifesto, therefore, is something that the Tamil voter could salute, never mind the fact that it echoes the Vadukoddai Resolution and the anger, violence, misery, death, destruction and dismemberment it precipitated. Manifesto-scribblers are tasked to script documents that rake in the votes. They don’t have to deal with the fall out. Responsibility is not their referent framework. Read More
