Tamils want Dissanayake to follow non-racist policies: Jaffna-based editor

Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been elected Sri Lanka’s new president, and Tamils who largely did not vote for him would want him to pursue non-racist policies, the Tamil editor of a prominent Jaffna-based journal said on Sunday.

Arul Mahalingam told The Federal over the telephone from Jaffna in Sri Lanka’s north that Tamils mostly did not vote for Dissanayake as the latter and his JVP party did not actively court the minority community.

Dissanayake avoids Tamil areas

Dissanayake, who heads the Left-wing Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP or People’s Liberation Front), visited Jaffna, the Tamil heartland, only once during the eight weeks of campaigning.

In contrast, both Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sajith Premadasa came to Jaffna multiple times to seek Tamil votes in the fiercely contested presidential election.

In contrast, “the JVP camp was supremely confident that it will be able to secure majority votes simply from the Sinhalese areas”, said Mahalingam, who edits the widely read Jaffna Monitor English language fortnightly.

‘Dissanayake is secular’

In any case, the JVP’s earlier vocal support to the military campaign against the Tamil Tigers guerrillas who were wiped out in 2009 also played a role in alienating Tamil voters, other residents in Jaffna town said.

But Mahalingam conceded that Dissanayake, despite drawing the bulk of his support from the Sinhalese majority, had come out as a secular and non-racist leader throughout the election campaign.

“Unfortunately, the JVP has some known racist elements who often talk irrational things,” the editor said, reflecting concerns among the Tamils. “He (Dissanayake) must control these elements.”

JVP and Tamil areas

Dissanayake, however, fared poorly in the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka’s north, Jaffna included, and the east, falling well behind incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe and main opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, who too are drawn, like the JVP leader, from the majority Sinhalese community.

A Tamil candidate who stood in the fray, Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanenthiran, secured a little over 200,000 votes in the northern and eastern provinces. His strongest showing was in Jaffna where he got 116,688 votes.

Had he not been in the fray, the votes would have gone to either Wickremesinghe or Premadasa but in the present context would not have made any significant change to the overall result.

The sole Tamil candidate

A former MP from the eastern district of Batticaloa, Ariyanenthiran said he did not expect to win the presidential race but votes he gets would show the world that “the Tamil national issue remains unresolved and must be addressed”.