UTHR(J):Information Bulletin No. 36 ;Part III: The Elections(2004) and their aftermath: A triumph of fascist diplomacy?
Saturday, May 29th, 2004Part III: The Elections and their aftermath
Date of Release: 29th May 2004
A triumph of fascist diplomacy?
While the nature of the LTTE(P)’s military gains against the Karuna are dubious, it is to the LTTE(P)’s diplomacy and Colombo’s incompetence that one needs to look to understand the events. Our examination is admittedly speculative, but the pattern of developments raises questions that cry for answers.
The LTTE(P) appears to have assessed the outcome of the April 2nd elections, which brought in a minority government led by the President’s party, and ordered its surrogate party, the TNA, to fish in troubled waters. The main subject of any deal the LTTE(P) sought to make with the Government would inevitably have been Karuna – nothing overt, just a few more clarifications to the Government’s ‘neutrality’.
The LTTE(P) attacked and the Navy did nothing – remained ‘neutral’ – and supposedly saw nothing and reported nothing. Is the Navy so redundant or was it just convenient? Karuna’s spokesman Varathan charged in an interview with the Asian Tribune (21 Apr.04) that President Kumaratunge ditched Karuna in return for an offer of the TNA’s good offices in peace talks and conditional support in Parliament. Having seemingly dispensed with Karuna, the TNA voted against the Government’s nominee for speaker – D.E.W.Gunasekera – a man who had long spoken up for the Tamils.
The TNA’s lethal democracy
Having fashioned a parliamentary group – the TNA – to tamely promote the LTTE(P)’s claim to be the sole representatives of the Tamils, the LTTE was determined to extract every strategic use from it. It was important enough that intelligence chief Pottu was placed directly in charge. The blatant rigging of the last elections and the failure of the Government to check the abuse despite repeated complaints have been amply documented in the reports of independent election monitors.
The LTTE(P)’s political wing leaders in Jaffna, Illamparuthy (Aanjaneyar) and Paapaa were given the job of fixing the election for the district. We deal with one aspect. According to information from a member of the fixing party, which is fairly indicative, the ballots to be cast by the fixers were to be divided in the following ratio: For every three ballots, one for Gajendran, president of the so-called International Students’ Organisation, one for Mrs. Padmini Sithamparanathan and one for the candidate from the electorate. That aside there would have been internal manoeuvring of the fixers by the candidates themselves and senior LTTE persons. It was Gajendran who organised Jaffna University students in mass impersonation at the 2001 elections.
The preference votes tell their own story:
Gajendran: 112 077, Padmini Sithamparanathan: 68 239, G.G. Ponnamablam: 60 768, Suresh Premachandran: 45 783. TULF’ s Mavai Senathirajah scraped through with
38 779. A popular figure such as Sivamaharajah lost with 24 964.
The electoral list was the same one used in 2001 when the TNA obtained a total of 102 214 (less than Gajendran’s preference vote. But this time a section from Vanni also voted!). In 2001, Anandasangaree and Mavai Senathiraja led with more than 33,000 preference votes – about a third the number obtained by the party, and 20 000 to 30 000 of the TNA’s votes were fraudulent. In 2004, the TNA increased its vote from 102 324 (or 55.8% of votes counted) to 257 320 (or 90.6%). The EPDP’s share dropped from 58 000 (or 30.6%) in 2001 to 18 612 (or 6.55%) in 2004.
These figures are the result of extensive fraud and violent attacks, threats and harassment of the opposition and the voters themselves. One could say without hesitation that at least 100 000 of the 112 077 preference votes supposedly obtained by Gajendran in 2004 were fraudulent, as with about 170 000 of the 257 320 votes credited to the TNA in Jaffna. Thus even the last vestiges of democratic choice among the Tamils were utterly bankrupted. That was not the most sinister aspect of the whole exercise.
Suresh Premachandran performed the marvelous feat of increasing his preferential vote to 45 783 from 13 302 in 2001, which too was notoriously fraudulent. Also on the TNA list, long time LTTE ally C.V.K. Sivagnanam obtained 25 954 and failed to get elected. Sivagnanam was, in 1987, LTTE’s nominee to the aborted North-East Interim Council, when Premachandran, as General Secretary of the EPRLF, was its arch-enemy. Sivagnanam was deeply offended, since the votes were a measure, not of the people’s regard for him, but rather the LTTE’s. This was an election in which the LTTE assigned the votes!
The score was even more remarkable because it is well known that the chief fixers, Illamparithy and Paapaa, hated Premachandran. Obviously Illamparithy and Paapaa had been given firm orders from the top that Premachandran must enter Parliament. We pointed out in Bulletin No.35 that Suresh P. is a leading asset of intelligence chief Pottu Amman, and his men are now constituted into a special intelligence unit under Pottu.
While in the South and in neighbouring India, people have used their vote to protest against the economic and political order of neo-colonialism, those rulers imposed on the Tamils, whether through a rigged electoral process or through simple military might, are in fact the keepers of a prison. The people undergo all manner of torments there, from murder and torture to child conscription.
Among those to whom the people of the North-East owe the robbery of their democracy and the legitimisation of their ‘sole representatives’, are sadly, the European Union.
On 5th April 2004 John Cushnahan MEP, who headed the EU election observers issued a statement, which said of elections in the North-East: “It was encouraging that the people of the North and East were able to exercise their franchise through cluster arrangements. However, it is a matter of deep concern that the electoral process in the North an East was tainted by intimidation and violence”.
But the stark reality was that the election in Jaffna was not just tainted. It was completely polluted. The violence, intimidation and murder were systematic, unchecked and the election was the culmination of that process. All these crimes since 2002 were exclusively the work of one party, which Cushnahan did not name. Cushnahan is evidently pleased with the cluster arrangements he pushed for – done in such a way that people from the LTTE-controlled area were in practice free to vote just for the one party he was reluctant to name.
The monitoring group Paffrel observed in its interim report the fact that those contesting the elections independent of the LTTE doing so only on the pain of being deemed traitors, exerted a ‘chilling influence’ on both contestants from the opposition and those who would vote for them. Indeed the observations of foreign monitors contained in the report suggest that many voters were spared the painful dilemma by having their polling cards taken from them beforehand and even on their way to the polls:
“…the voter turn out [in Jaffna town] appeared to be low and large numbers of youth were also observed with polling cards, particularly in the vicinity of Jaffna campus (University)…
[The following refers to the exercise of democracy by voters form the LTTE-controlled Killinochchi, which Cushnahan found ‘encouraging’:] “Two international observers at the Muhamalai cluster polling station independently witnessed large-scale vote rigging originating from the LTTE-controlled ‘uncleared area’. Between 11 AM and noon international observers saw young men collecting polling cards from persons crowded into open-air vehicles. In other instances, young men were handing out polling cards to persons in vehicles, seemingly checking them (perhaps for sex) before handing them over. At least three persons were seen holding two-inch wads of voter cards…”
The foreign monitors also interviewed and recorded testimonies of opposition party workers and polling agents who had received dire threats from the LTTE, both personally and impersonally: “They [came home the night before the elections and] grabbed me by the throat and pushed me into a coconut tree. I felt something [cold] stick in my ears…One of the men hit me in the stomach with a flashlight…”
The result was duly hailed by the LTTE publicity apparatus as an affirmation of its sole representative status. This was the liberation of a people who had since 1931 known and valued the free exercise of universal adult franchise. The Commissioner for Elections who had earlier pledged to be strict and vigilant, tamely accepted the results for the North-East with some words to the effect that they were a special case beyond him.
The MPs were soon put to good use. The Daily Mirror of 6th May carried a curious item ‘Oslo warns it might pull out’. The contents of the story, concerning the TNA MPs meeting Erik Solheim at the Norwegian Embassy, indicated that the source was Suresh Premachandran. Solheim was quoted laying down conditions for the Sri Lankan President, who according to Solheim is to negotiate on the LTTE’s convoluted terms – negotiations only with the LTTE starting with its ISGA proposals, not to be a piece of deception to obtain aid and within a time frame. Solheim was further quoted as warning that Norway would pull out form facilitation should criticism continue to be levelled against them.
In comparison with the evil machinations and organised hyperactivity of the LTTE lobbies, which were ably using Norway and the EU to advance their agenda, the Government and the Sinhalese polity were hopelessly inert. The latter are unable grasp issues in time and identify priorities. One putting together the sequence of events since last November would be left with the impression that MEP John Cushnahan and peace envoy Solheim have been far more active in deciding trends in the North-East, and the country’s destiny, than the President of Sri Lanka.
The Return of the Ellalan Force
In the wake of the election, the LTTE’s death squad the Ellalan Force (Ellalan Padai) is up to its old tricks in Jaffna. Its role: to reassert the LTTE’s control over the local population through terror. The Ellalan Force functions as the LTTE’s morals police – violently eliminating persons it deems “anti-social” elements. It also functions as a political hit squad, blamed for the murders of many of the LTTE’s political opponents, among them, the Jaffna Mayors Sarojini Yogeswaran and Sivapalan who belonged to the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF).
On 16th May Subramaniam Chandralalith,(age 22) was found stabbed to death in a Jaffna neighborhood. A note near his body signed by the Ellalan Force claimed responsibility for the killing, accusing Chandralalith and five others abducted with him of “anti-social activities,” including robbery, rape, abduction, extortion, fraud and child molestation.
Chadralalith’s mother-in-law told the Police that LTTE cadre Easwaran (the LTTE’s area leader for Nallur) abducted the men at gunpoint while they were playing cards and took them away in a van. The other victims were found blindfolded, bound and beaten. They told police they had been tortured. Tamilnet on May 16 reported that the police said they had not arrested anyone in connection with the murder and abductions and did “not know anything about the Ellalan Army,” a claim that is exceedingly hard to believe.
Easwaran’s brutality (and that of the Ellalan Force) is well-known in Jaffna. Eeswaran was also implicated in the June 2003 murder of Thambirajah Subathiran (Robert), respected deputy leader of the Varatharajaperumal wing of the EPRLF. In April 2004, police officials told James Ross of Human Rights Watch that “no progress had been made in the case, despite leads implicating a local Tiger leader”. To our knowledge Easwaran has never even been questioned.[7] The freedom and impunity enjoyed by well-known serial killers is a unique aspect of the Sri Lankan peace process.
http://www.uthr.org/bulletins/Bul36.htm
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