NPP creates history, finishes on top in Tamil heartland Jaffna

Sri Lanka’s ruling NPP on Friday (November 15) created history by becoming the first national party in decades to take the top position electorally in Tamil areas, where a bloody separatist campaign raged for a quarter century.

In Jaffna, the Tamil heartland in the country’s north, the National People’s Power (NPP) of Marxist President Anura Dissanayake bagged three of the total six seats.

NPP steals the thunder

It also won two of the four seats in Trincomalee in the east and two of the six seats in Vanni electoral district, where the separatist war ended on a horrific note in 2009. The other four seats in Vanni went to a party each.

Also read: Sri Lanka parliamentary poll results: Ruling NPP heads to huge win

In Nuwaraeliya in the heart of Sri Lanka, home to hundreds of thousands of tea plantation workers of Indian Tamil origin, the NPP swept five of the eight seats, stunning the ruling party’s friends and foes.

Overall, the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi or ITAK, popularly known as the Federal Party, came second in Tamil areas in the north and east of the island nation.

Setback to separatist politics

Political parties which for long have supported the vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and continue to voice pro-separatist noises faced huge setbacks despite netting a few seats.

Tamil areas, Jaffna in particular, have for decades voted dominantly for Tamil parties, crushing the challenges posed by national parties headquartered in Sri Lankan regions populated by the majority Sinhalese community.

But in the general elections which took place on Thursday, voters in Jaffna gave the thumbs up to the NPP, which vowed to carry out a national reconciliation in a country battered by ethnic strife and fight corruption.

Pro-LTTE diaspora rejected

At the last moment, pro-LTTE political activists and the pro-LTTE Tamil diaspora urged Tamils to vote for any Tamil party but not to a “Sinhalese party” in a desperate attempt to keep the flames of separation alive.

Results on Friday showed that the Jaffna voters had rejected the racist appeal.

“This is not a slap on the face of pro-LTTE diaspora but a body blow to them,” Arul, the editor of Jaffna Monitor, told The Federal on telephone from Jaffna.

Ex-LTTE fighters back NPP

He added that his conversations with the people of Jaffna showed that many former LTTE fighters, eager to embrace peace and turn a new leaf, had heavily voted for the NPP along with most first-time voters.

Another Jaffna resident who did not want to be quoted by name said: “People are sick and tired of all this separatist talk. They want to put the war behind them once and for all. This is the meaning of this pro-NPP vote.”

JVP and Tamils

Although President Dissanayake’s Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP, People’s Liberation Front), the NPP’s core constituent, is a largely Sinhalese party, it has spread its wings in the Tamil populated areas.

While Sri Lanka’s northern province is dominated by Tamils and is made up of five districts, the eastern province includes three districts and is multi-racial. On the east coast, Batticaloa is overwhelmingly Tamil. Muslims form the single largest majority in Trincomalee and Amparai.