The Tamil National Alliance secured a comprehensive majority in the first ever Northern Provincial Council election on 21 September. Although the result is unlikely to bring about a return of a Tamil insurgency, it will raise civil unrest risks in the three-year outlook.
IHS Global Insight perspective | |
Significance | The first Northern Provincial Council election was held on 21 September, resulting in a resounding majority for the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). The Northern Province saw most of the fighting during the Sri Lankan civil war. |
Implications | The TNA's victory is an endorsement of its policy to push for further autonomy for Sri Lanka's large Tamil minority, rather than for outright independence. Although the relatively peaceful conduct of the election is likely to enhance President Mahinda Rajapaksa's reputation in the international community, he will have to do more to improve the country's human rights record if his government is to avoid isolation. |
Outlook | The likelihood of the return of an armed Tamil insurgency will be dictated in part by the TNA's success in achieving more autonomy over the next few years. For now, militant activity is unlikely due to a lack of capability and appetite, and because of comprehensive security measures in the Northern Province. Rather, civil unrest risks will increase as the TNA pushes for further autonomy. |
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Chief minister-elect for Sri Lanka's Northern Province government, |
On 21 September, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won 30 out of 38 seats in the landmark Northern Provincial Council election, securing 78% of the vote. President Mahinda Rajapaksa's coalition, which includes the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), won seven seats, while the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress (SLMC) took the remaining seat. The election was the first in the province, which has a Tamil majority and saw most of the fighting during the country's three-decade civil war that ended in 2009. Since then, the province has been governed by the president directly, much to the anger of Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil community. The TNA's C.V. Vigneswaran, a former Supreme Court judge, is now poised to become the province's chief minister.
The conduct of the election itself was largely peaceful. This was due in part to the large army presence in Northern Province. However, according to local reports, the army was complicit in some violence and voter intimidation in the run-up to the polls. For example, army soldiers were accused by election monitors of attacking the supporters of a TNA candidate at her home in Jaffna on 19 September; a claim that the army has denied. Nevertheless, with voter turnout strong at roughly 70% and larger-than-expected support for the TNA, it seems that any voter intimidation and electioneering by pro-Rajapaksa elements in the police and army was either largely unsuccessful or greatly limited.
The TNA itself is an amalgamation of four Tamil parties with varying degrees of support for militancy, and which during the civil war acted as the political face of the insurgent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Despite this, it is likely that the TNA will adopt a moderate approach, in that it will probably push for more autonomy, rather than outright independence. Vigneswaran has said that the TNA wants to operate within the political framework and will strive to achieve more power for Tamils through political means. Moreover, he has called for foreign countries, particularly India (which has a large and influential Tamil minority of its own), to reduce their criticism of the Sri Lankan government, saying that it undermines the TNA's push for greater autonomy.
Despite the TNA's resounding success in Northern Province, support for Rajapaksa remains strong among the ethnic Singhalese community in the rest of the country. This was evident in the results of the other two provincial council elections held on the same day. The UPFA won the majority of seats in the Central and North-Western provinces, numbering 36 and 34 respectively. The SLMC also managed to secure two seats in the Central Province and one seat in North-Western Province. The UPFA winning in two of the three provinces is not surprising, but it is a clear message that the Tamil victory is confined to the north and that Rajapaksa's hold of the country remains strong (see Sri Lanka: 27 August 2013: Sri Lanka's new law and order ministry to increase president's control of government).
Outlook and implications
Although significant, the election should be viewed as part of the ongoing reconciliation process in the north. Although issues such as employment and economic development remain crucial for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, autonomy for Northern Province remains the paramount objective of many Tamils. The consensus in the community seems to be that the Northern Provincial Council election is an alternative means to achieve a degree of autonomy that the LTTE ultimately failed to gain during the unsuccessful and devastating civil war.
The implications of the TNA's victory will be evident over the next few years, as the TNA provincial government presses its demands for more autonomy, rather than complete independence, as some Sri Lankan nationalist parties have suggested. As part of this, the TNA is very likely to demand the withdrawal of the army from cantonments established in Northern Province since the end of the war in 2009. In particular, the TNA may consider using its constitutional right as a provincial council to raise its own police force and eject the army from provincially owned lands. In response, it is likely that Rajapaksa's government will attempt to amend the constitutional provision that allows for this, thus creating potential triggers for protests in the province and increasing civil unrest risks. These protests would probably elicit a heavy-handed response from security forces, meaning that they will be at a high risk of turning violent. Protests would most likely be largely confined to Northern Province, but some small protests by Tamils in Colombo would be a risk, although these are less likely to be violent.
The TNA government's success in achieving more autonomy will in part dictate the likelihood of a return to an armed struggle. For now, a return to an insurgency is unlikely in the three-year outlook due to a combination of the government's comprehensive surveillance of any militant activity in Northern Province, the lack of capability of remaining LTTE militants, and a general lack of appetite for more violence. There is some evidence of LTTE militants regrouping in India's Tamil Nadu, but this has also been largely contained by the Indian police (see Sri Lanka: 3 September 2013: Arrest of LTTE militants in India indicates increased terrorism risk in Sri Lanka). Another important factor will be how the Tamil international diaspora view the TNA government. IHS's monitoring of Tamil social media suggests that there is some hostility towards what they perceive as the TNA's moderate approach. In any case, the influence of the LTTE's international leadership, which had contributed significantly to the LTTE's success, has been in decline due to fragmentation. A regrouping of the diaspora in favour of an independent nation would be an indication of the return of an armed insurgency. If this occurs, militants would probably target military bases in Northern Province rather than civilian areas for fear that a mass casualty attack would jeopardise international sympathy for the Tamil movement. Other aspirational targets would potentially be limited to assassination attempts on Rajapaksa and his family, at least in the early stages.
Overall, the passage of the election without any significant violence or major irregularities will probably be positive for the Rajapaksa government and will reduce international calls for the government's isolation. This also means that the November 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo is more likely to go ahead, despite the Canadian government's decision to boycott the meeting over human rights abuses (see Canada - Sri Lanka: 29 April 2013: Canada pushes for Sri Lanka's international isolation). That said, the Rajapaksa government will have to further demonstrate its commitment to improving its human rights record, particularly as the United Nations' human rights chief has given the government a deadline of March 2014 to do so.