The Victory Of The ITAK: The Challenges And Tasks Faced By The People
By Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe -October 18, 2013
Ajit Rupasinghe
The overwhelming electoral mandate given to the ITAK by the people of the Northern Province has a depth of historical significance that should be grasped and acted upon. It has decisive consequences for the future of Lanka. First of all, the people’s mandate embodies the reality of the majority of the oppressed Tamil and Moslem people in the North- both as oppressed nationalities and as a super-exploited and oppressed economic class. Together, they have expressed their desire to seek a path of freedom and liberation away from the suppression and subordination of the State. The Lankan State has been delivered a historical verdict by the people of the North. The people’s mandate and the electoral victory of the ITAK achieves historic significance only in this context. It is beyond debate that the Lankan State, under the Rajapakse Regime, has been transformed into a highly centralized unitary State, where all power is vested and concentrated in an omnipotent Executive Presidency, standing above the People, above the Law and the Constitution. A State controlled and commanded by the Rajapakse Troika. This absolute dictatorship is exercised by entrenching and enforcing a Sinhala supremacist agenda, under the banner of Sinhala-Buddhist Chauvinism and Patriotism. It is directed at perpetuating hegemony and domination over all other nationalities. This as a strategy of dividing, deluding, derailing and suppressing the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat and the oppressed masses of Lanka, which alone can bring the whole system down. The exercise and enforcement of undisputed and undivided dynastic dictatorship in perpetuity throughout the length and breadth of the Land of Lanka is the overriding agenda of survival of the Regime. This is to be secured by the politics of militarized chauvinism and totalitarian dictatorship. This is its condition of survival.
The election to the Northern Provincial Council itself was a supreme contest of political will and determination. The Regime tried its best to repeal/ decapitate the 13th Amendment before the election. It failed only due to the demand by India that its paramount status as the regional hegemonic power be acknowledged and that no country or state in the whole region may act to challenge or disrupt the geo-political status-quo. The consequences would be serious. That was the gist of the message. The Regime simply backtracked and caved in. Why has the 13th Amendment turned into a political volcano simmering far more violently than when it was first introduced? The abolition of the 13th Amendment is intended to axe the very identity and existence of any nation or nationality other than the Sinhala-Buddhist Nation that shall exercise the exclusive, undivided and undisputed supreme right to Nationhood and Statehood. It is in the face of this mortal threat posed to their very existence and political status as distinct nationalities that the election was held in the North. The electoral victory of the ITAK is nothing less and nothing more than the victory of a people’s mandate for liberation from national oppression, military occupation, exploitation, destitution and degradation. It is an expression of the aspiration to stand tall and equal as citizens of Lanka and claim the fruits of the 21stCentury.
