The former Chief Minister of the Northern Provincial Council, Member of Parliament CV Wigneswaran, was again demanding a federal government and was dragging himself into a fight with the Sinhala Maha Samaj. Addressing the media after the second throne speech of the successor president. Wigneswaran says he won’t look back unless he somehow gets federal control. He speaks carelessly and passionately, disparaging the monks who protested against the 13th.
These threats, intimidation and pressure by the northern federalists, hartals, hoisting of black flags, demands for constitutional separation of powers, secession, self-determination, and repeated declarations of fighting for separate states are not new to us. Prabhakaran also fought for it for thirty years. Sri Lanka defeated that challenge and threat.
As a solution to the problem of the Tamil people, India forced the 13th constitutional amendment on us and more or less enforced it and appointed Vardharaja Perumal as the Chief Minister and in the first Provincial Council of the North East. Varadaraja Perumal raised the Eelam flag in Trincomalee and declared an Eelam state and fled to India, and according to the Indo-Lanka agreement peace did not come to Sri Lanka. The war was not over. The separatist LTTE terrorism continued to grow by leaps and bounds and for that the Sri Lankan state had to pay a huge compensation. According to a book published recently by Mr. Menan, a former Indian foreign minister, Sri Lanka lost more than 200 billion dollars due to this 30-year war. The compensation paid by the Sri Lankan state and the Sinhala Tamil Muslim community is huge.
Needless to say, the Sri Lankan state suffered serious damage and irreparable wounds due to the riots in the south due to the Indo-Lanka treaty and the protracted war of the Tamil separatist terrorists in the north. Harmony and harmony were also weakened.
A few years after the end of the war, the Northern Provincial Council elections were held and the Provincial Council was established and CV Vigneswaran became its Chief Minister. During his 4-year tenure as Chief Minister, there was no progress in the Northern Province. That position and powers were used to promote racism and separatism. To clash with the central government. They worked to provoke the Sinhalese by telling international gossips, provoking the security forces and threatening them, and accusing them of war crimes, but they did not work for the sake of reconciliation or developmental politics.
Fourteen years after the end of the war, Wigneswaran, who came to Parliament after holding the position of Chief Minister for four years and then saying goodbye to the Tamil National Alliance, became more racist than the Tamil National Alliance and got votes from the Tamil people. easily. At a time like this, which is immersed in the decline of an economic crisis that cannot be recovered, the current successive president by bringing the enforcement of 13 to the fore, weakening national unity and harmony, has instilled the sentiments in the Sinhala Tamil Muslim societies for a new round of ethnic differentiation.
The sparks that have been extinguished under the ashes have been brought up and ignited. Wounds that were healing have been patched. It was the successor president who prepared the script to bring to the fore 13 a non-existent problem and bring to the fore Vigneswaran’s federal absurdity and to stir up the contradictions of the Sinhala society that is necessary for it and to move the ongoing crisis from chaos to chaos. The President should take all the responsibility for the adverse consequences of taking these matters forward at this moment.
However, the federal threat of the Tamil racist former editorial leaders should be remembered at least a little. It should be remembered that Tamil leaders opposed the Sinhalese majority rule even when there was no reason. Even then, the Tamil leaders were opposed to the fact that the Sinhalese would naturally have a majority of seats when the English government divided the constituencies in the country, and in 1921 they demanded equal representation of the Sinhalese race and the minorities in the legislature, and they demanded the system of equal representation for all races on the basis of ethnicity. Arunachalam resigned from the Congress and formed the Tamil People’s Assembly on a racist basis, saying that although the leadership of the Sri Lankan Independence War i.e. the Ceylon National Union was given to a Tamil elite from Jaffna, under the 1921 constituency system, Arunachalam resigned from the Congress and formed the Tamil People’s Assembly. He also got a status similar to the presidency of Sri Lanka. That is the mandate of being the main representative of the local people. It is a golden opportunity that the Ponnambalam brothers got. But they could not overcome their Tamilness and emerge as Sri Lankans. Even today, a situation has arisen where it is impossible for a Tamil to take the post of President and Prime Minister of the country because the Ponnambalam brothers squandered the opportunity that was given to them. What happened to the Ponnambalam brothers for advancing Tamil nationalist ambitions without being Sri Lankan, happened to all the federalists who followed them, and the same has happened to Sangans Vigneswaran, Sumanthiran today.
At that time, none of the crimes allegedly committed by the Sinhalese had happened to the Tamil people before independence. At that time Sinhala was not made the official language. There were no settlements in the Eastern Province. University admission was neither standardized .72 nor was it a republic. There was no July 83. But the Ponnambalam brothers led a movement against the representation of the Sinhalese majority since twenty-six years before the independence of Sri Lanka, when the Tamil leaders continued to express distrust of the Sinhalese political leaders and the Sinhalese people even before independence. A reflection on the other side is inevitable and it is natural.
The Sinhala People’s Assembly was formed in 1937 under the leadership of Bandaranaike. But under Ponnambalam, the Tamil People’s Assembly came into existence ten years earlier in 1921. The attitude that the Sinhalese is unfit to lead this country is an attitude that existed in the Tamil leadership from the beginning. The attitude of the Sinhalese being too small to rule them and the arrogance continued in them, which later evolved into the Tamil elite mentality created by the English colonial rule under the division and control of g g ponnambalam, SJV chelvanayakam, Amirthalingam Sampanan Wigneswaran.
In 1949, the Chelvanayagam Tamil Arusu Kachchi Party or the Federal Party was established with the aim of overcoming the idea that the Sinhalese were not qualified to rule the Tamil nation. it. The biography of Chelvanayagam published by J. Wilson confirms this idea. Chelvanayakam continued the practice of segregation to alienate the Sinhalese and the Tamils. g g Ponnambalam followed the course of taking state power in cooperation with the Sinhalese. Like Sampanhan, the leader of the Tamil National Alliance, from 1949 to 1952, Chelvanayakam preached the need to build a separate Tamil state without any reasonable reason. He did not get the reasons until 1952. Therefore, Chelvanayagam also lost its parliamentary seat in the general election held that year. Although the Sinhala Language Act of 1956 was a blessing for Chelvanayakam, who had no rope to hang on to, the Tamil Language Special Arrangements Act came along with it, and he suppressed it in the Tamil society and insidiously paved the way for the Bandaranaike Chelvanayagam Agreement of 1957.
Many people claim that if the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam agreement of 1957 had been implemented, this issue would have been resolved in the North East. But using the work of AJ Wilson, it is clear that this is not the case. Chelvanayagam considered all the agreements as intermediate solutions on the way to a separate state or a federal state. . In Chelvanayagam, the policy was that a little now, a lot later, and the rest later. Today, Wigneswaran is announcing to reach that goal in several stages. Tamil political parties in the north use different strategies to achieve those goals. Only in that can their differences and usages demand dilutions and different situations be identified.
If so, I will present the difference between the federal state and the unitary state that Vigneswarans and federalists demand and conclude this writing.
A federal state is not a widely devolved state. It is a federal state if the power devolved to the periphery i.e. state, province, or smaller unit cannot be withdrawn without the consent of the periphery. Federal control. It is a unitary state if the divided power can be withdrawn without obtaining the consent of the periphery.
Vigneswaran demands an irrevocable power. That is a federal government. Therefore, the leaders of the country should stop deceiving Tamil leaders with such sweet words.
And this Goranadu of Wigneswaran should be democratically defeated within the ideological, political or constitutional framework. In a situation like this, a constitutional opportunity has arisen to put aside exaggerations and say that we will not go beyond one limit. The country needs a national leader who has the guts and personality to express it.
Nishantha Sri Varnasimha
10.02.2023