The internal strife in the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has taken a new turn with the sudden announcement by the adversaries of the main Tamil coalition’s leadership of the formation of a new organization called Thamil Makkal Peravai (Tamil People’s Council-TPC) on Saturday. Upon its inauguration at the Jaffna Library auditorium the TPC issued a statement spelling out its organizational structure as well as the objectives.

“The Tamil People’s Council (TPC) will be headed by Honourable C V Vigneswaran and co-chaired by Dr P Lakshman, Consultant Cardiologist at the Teaching Hospital, Jaffna and Mr. T Vasantharajah, the Secretary of the Batticaloa civil society, the statement said.

“The council will be electing a Sub-committee to develop a political framework for the Tamil question and this Sub-committee will start its functions on the 27th Dec. 2015. This sub-committee is expected to produce its initial outline within the 1st month and the draft would be consulted by international experts as well as published for public through various media and their feedback will be also gathered. This bidirectional approach and transparency will enable the council to come up with a political framework that would be very much welcomed by the Tamil people for their long standing ethnic conflict within Sri Lanka” it added.
Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran’s leadership in the TPC and the role played by Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) leader Suresh Premachandran and All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam in the formation of the new organization strongly indicate what the new outfit is all about. Wigneswaran has been at loggerheads with the TNA leadership for the past few months and the other two are well known strong critics of TNA chief R. Sampanthan. The objectives outlined by the above statement as well as the founders of the TPC point to the fact that it was meant to be the alternative political force to the TNA. 

Premachandran had said that the new front was not a political party nor was it created to embarrass the TNA leadership. It was wrong to portray the TPC as an alternative to the TNA, he had stated. However, at the same time he had said that they would formulate a set of proposals aimed at the resolution of the ethnic problem in consultation with the academics and intellectuals, since taking decisions by a few individuals on the ethnic issue was not acceptable. 



In a pacifying note he also said that the proposals would be presented sometimes through the TNA to the Constitutional Assembly that was to be convened by the government in January next year in order to draft a new Constitution. However, in the same breath, he had charged that it was TNA leader Sampanthan who was responsible for the formation of a new front.

The claims by the founders of the TPC that their new organization was apolitical and it was not meant to be a challenge to the TNA and they did not intend to embarrass the TNA leadership by forming the new outfit are childish and in a way, an insult to the people’s intelligence. When Premachandran says that Sampanthan was responsible for the formation of the TPC he implies that the new outfit was formed since the TNA had failed in its responsibilities as a political party.  It is simple logic that an apolitical organization cannot fill the gap, if any, created by the TNA’s political failure.

On the other hand, if the founders of the TPC including Wigneswaran and Premachandran still accept the TNA as the “sole representative of the Tamil people” no other party or organization is needed for the formulation of a political solution to the ethnic issue.Also in the event of a constitutional assembly being convened the TNA would not wait until another group such as the TPC formulated proposals for the resolution of the Tamil issue.

The recent history of the friction between the TNA leadership and the founders of the new front would clearly dismiss the claim by the latter that the TPC was not meant to replace the TNA. TPC did not spring up suddenly within a vacuum. It was the upshot of a long drawn out wrangling within the TNA in particular and within the northern Tamil polity in general.

The conflict between the leadership of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), the main party in the TNA and the other smaller constituent parties of the coalition dates backs to 2012 when the controversy over the registration of the TNA as a political party first cropped up. Since the TNA is not a registered party it contests the election under the symbol of the main party, the ITAK giving an undue advantage to the latter over the other smaller parties of the coalition. Therefore the smaller parties demand that the TNA be registered with the Elections Secretariat. ITAK though accepts it as a principle, had been dragging its feet for the past three years. That was the crux of the wrangling between the constituent parties of the TNA. 

Besides, a second conflict has been simmering for the past several months between the TNA leadership and the Northern Province Chief Minister.Wigneswaran who showed signs of moderation in his actions soon after he was elected Chief Minister of the Tamil dominated Northern Province had become so radical lately that he moved two resolutions in his council one of which claimed that genocide of Tamils had taken place in Sri Lanka during the war and the other had requested the UNHRC to carry out an international investigation into the war crimes allegedly committed by the armed forces during the war. However, the TNA leadership did not subscribe to these resolutions.

Leaders of several political parties some of which are constituent members of the TNA have been pushing Wigneswaran to take a lead in challenging the TNA leadership for the past weeks. TULF leader Anandasangaree, invited the Chief Minister to take over his party’s leadership. Ponnambalam said that if Wigneswaran takes over the TNA his party would rejoin the coalition. Premachandran criticized Sampanthan for not supporting the two controversial resolutions – one on genocide and the other on an international investigation- adopted by the Northern Provincial Council. Finally everything came to a head with the formation of the TPC. 

The timing of the formation of the TPC seems to be opportune since with the conversion of the Parliament into a Constitutional Assembly as announced by President Maithripala Sirisena,the debate on the resolution of the ethnic problem would heat up in the north possibly giving the extremists an upper hand. On the other hand extremism would not succeed in all situations. It must also be reminded that a group of former LTTE cadres who contested the last general elections in the north were rejected by the people.Except in rare cases, the traditional parties have always survived against all odds like this in Sri Lanka.