The presidential election in Sri Lanka is slated to take place on September 21. CV Wigneswaran, is the former CM of the Tamil majority Northern Province and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. In an interview with Padma Rao Sundarji in Colombo, the 84-year-old, who is also an MP from Jaffna, speaks on what Sri Lankan Tamils want and why he is supporting a former LTTE protégé as the first Tamil candidate in Saturday’s presidential election.
Q: The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) was the only parliamentary representation of the Tamil majority of north and east Sri Lanka. But it is now in tatters. Senior leader MA Sumanthiran of one of its leading factions, ITAK, is supporting current opposition leader Sajith Premadasa. You and some others have defied the TNA and charted a different course by propping Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanethiran, the first Tamil in the history of Sri Lanka to contest for the country’s highest office. Why?
CVW: The TNA is disintegrating. There are internal squabbles and uncertainty over its future. Sumanthiran was my student. But now, he is expecting personal benefit, and that is why he is supporting Premadasa. I think he has been promised a ministership. In any case, his heart was never with the Tamil national cause. See, I was born and bred in Colombo and can yet empathise with the north and east. Sumanthiran studied in Jaffna and still can’t empathise with them.
Q: The three forerunners in the election are Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), the Marxist-Leninist Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD), and the person you are said to be close to, current president Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is contesting as an independent candidate. They have all referred to the ‘Tamil Cause’. Will one of them deliver on their promises to the Tamils?
CVW: So far, Sri Lankan presidential candidates have always got us Tamils to vote for them. Still, not a single Sinhala president has ever helped us with our political problems. No matter what they say, the same holds good even this time. Ranil Wickremesinghe promised me personally, that he would give us Tamils all the powers envisaged in the 13th Amendment, which was co-authored by India.
In July last year, he told us that he was setting up a committee to suggest ways to return powers to the Tamil Provincial Councils, and to draft statutes in Tamil for the north and east. I had great regard for Ranil as an experienced politician of great stature. I thought he would do something. I supported his candidacy openly, not surreptitiously. But to date, he has done nothing. I am disillusioned, but now I know for sure, that none of the Sinhala forerunners, including Ranil, will ever shed their ethno-Buddhist-Sinhala mindset. Hence, the only way to bring out our individuality was by floating our own Tamil candidate.
Q: What exactly are your ‘problems’ at this time? Surely the 13th Amendment, which was drafted way back in 1987, is outdated by now?
CVW: Plenty. According to the principles of international law, we Tamils are a ‘nation’. We are not Sri Lanka’s largest minority, but the majority population of the north and east of Sri Lanka. Please understand that and recognise our individuality. Earlier, we had our own kingdoms. It is only the British who brought us together with the rest of Sri Lanka for administrative purposes. You are right; the 13th Amendment may not even be the solution any more. We want more. But neither Ranil nor Sajith are prepared to fully implement even that amendment, even though it is part of Sri Lanka’s unitary constitution!
The truth is, Sri Lanka is ruled by an ethnocracy working from Colombo. It’s like Israel. It has been 15 years since the end of the civil war and the defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Now I ask you, why are five out of seven regional headquarters of the Sri Lankan Army still stationed in the north and east? To keep us Tamils under the boot of the army. So unless these Sinhalas end their hegemony towards us, we will never have peace in this country.
Q: Some candidates have spoken of rewriting the Sri Lankan Constitution altogether. Wouldn’t that hold out some hope for Tamils in the north and east?
CVW : No. Many years ago, when Ranil was PM, they kept inviting us to snacks and tea to give suggestions about reworking the Constitution. Nothing happened. They simply don’t want to do anything. The only president who came close to changing it was former president Chandrika Kumaratunga Bandarnaike in her draft of 2000. But what did Ranil and his henchmen do? They burnt it inside Parliament. That is why we know by now that all of them want to keep us under subjugation and surveillance forever. Nothing more, nothing less.
Q: While recalling the militancy of LTTE in earlier years, you said in a recent interview that ‘it is through struggle and resistance that we protect our rights.” Surely, it is precisely because of such statements that can be misconstrued by impressionable youth, and now your support for a former LTTE protégé in Parliament (for whom the LTTE abducted and forced the real winner to resign), that the army remains in an area, that was rocked by one of the most brutal civil wars in the world for 30 years?
CVW I have made it amply clear many times that I don’t support an armed struggle. During my formative years, I was very impressed by Gandhi. In fact, when he died, I cried for two whole days and didn’t eat. My parents had to force me to eat! He proved that struggle and resistance need not be violent. By referring to the Tigers in the interview you mentioned, I was merely recording a fact of history. They fought an armed battle. But that is in the past. We need to struggle non-violently. Struggle and resistance are essential. Putting forth a Tamil candidate now is part of that struggle. Otherwise we will go into oblivion.
Q: Sri Lanka is in heavy debt to western donor nations. These nations have always supported the Tamil cause in the north and east. Do you plan to ask them to pressure Colombo now to ensure your demands are met?
CVW: They should push for a referendum in the north and east of Sri Lanka, just like the one that was held in East Timor, South Sudan, and Eritrea. That’s a democratic way of finding out what we Tamils really want. Sri Lanka has been colonising us by settling Sinhalese and even Muslims here, who are not in alignment with our cause. They should pay attention to that too. Then, there are lots of diaspora Tamils who want to invest money here, but are reluctant, in case their assets are frozen by Colombo on one pretext or another. We would like western countries to urge Colombo to allow this, as such investments could, after all, even help improve Sri Lanka’s overall economic condition.
Q: And all this while, you are still talking of a united Sri Lanka...
CVW : Of course! I don’t want a division of Sri Lanka. I have been a Supreme Court judge for the entire country. I love this country. I have travelled its length and breadth, and I speak all three of its languages. I would merely like to have a confederal constitution – like in Switzerland – so that we have maximum devolution in the north and east, can look after ourselves, and at the same time, remain part of a united Sri Lanka. We don’t want any divisions because that would only make us vassals of some other country, like India or China. We Tamils and Sinhalas are ‘known devils’ to each other. That is why I am sure we can work it out among ourselves, without rancour or hatred.
Padma Rao Sundarji is a veteran foreign correspondent and author of ‘Sri Lanka: The New Country’, HarperCollins 2015.