By Manekshaw
All political parties are presently busy with presenting their nominations for the forthcoming Local Government (LG) polls. Though the LG polls are to be held countrywide, it is important to take into consideration the outcome of the enthusiasm of all political parties which are getting ready to contest at the LG polls in the North and the East.
State Minister of Child Affairs, Vijayakala Maheswaran, after submitting the nominations for some of the candidates of the United National Party (UNP) in Jaffna a few days ago expressed confidence of the UNP winning a significant number of seats at the LG polls and taking control of some of the LG bodies in the North.
Vijayakala who is the widow of late UNP Parliamentarian T. Maheswaran would have been a child when the first blow struck to LG Governance in the North with Jaffna’s most popular Mayor Alfred Duraiyappah being gunned down by LTTE Leader Veluppillai Prabhakaran in July 1975 at Varatharajaperumal Temple in Ponnalai in the Jaffna Peninsula.
The dead LTTE leader once admitted that it was with the killing of Duraiyappah he kicked off his armed struggle. The first shot fired at Duraiyappah had not only led to the collapse of the LG system in the North, the assassination even led to the long drawn separatist war for three decades in the North and the East.
The Jaffna Municipal Council remained exemplary in every way until the assassination of Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiyappah who was instrumental in giving Jaffna a new facelift with the state-of-the-art new market building in the city as well as several other projects improving the standard of living of the city dwellers.
Duraiyappah was a Parliamentarian from 1960 to 65 before becoming the first Jaffna Mayor of a National party (Sri Lanka Freedom Party-SLFP) from 1970 to 75.
Duraiyappah’s dominance as a politician of a National party in the North had been a big challenge to the leading Tamil political parties in the Peninsula.
So as the Tamil political scene gathering momentum with the slogan of separate Tamil state Eelam, Duraiyappah was described by the Illankai Tamil Arasu Katchchi (ITAK) as a traitor and it was at the tender state of the Tamil militancy with Prabhakaran acquiring his first revolver, the energetic Jaffna Mayor became his first target.
When the Tamil militancy started spreading its wings in the North with attacks carried out on Police stations and with bank robberies, the Local Government administrations had also started to cripple along with the collapse of the law and order situation in the North.
Two Jaffna Mayors were gunned down twenty years after Alfred Duraiyappah was gunned down in 1975.
Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF)’s Pon Sivapalan who was a lawyer by profession who held the position of Mayor of Jaffna was killed in an explosion while he was holding a meeting at his office in Nallur in 1998.
Mayor Alfred Duraiyappah gunned down
The same year Mrs. Sarojini Yogeswaran who became the first woman Mayor of Jaffna was shot dead at her residence in Jaffna. Mrs. Sarojini Yogeswaran was the wife of former TULF Jaffna District Parliamentarian V. Yogeswaran who was assassinated along with TULF leader A. Amirthalingam in the early nineties in Colombo.
Apart from the assassinations of three Mayors in Jaffna, Batticaloa Mayor Cheliyan Perinpanayagam was also gunned down in year 2000.
So the LG system collapsed in the North and the East completely with the assassinations of nearly twenty LG members of various categories as Urban Council Chairmen, Pradeshiya Saba Chairmen and District Development Council members during the turbulent days.
It is even important to remember that the majestic Jaffna Municipal Council building which resembled very much the Jaffna Public Library building was even destroyed by the LTTE to prevent any move by the Army based inside the Jaffna Dutch Fort taking over the Jaffna Municipal Council building.
There was a big hue and cry when the Jaffna Public Library building was set on fire in 1981. However, there was hardly any condemnation coming up when the Jaffna Municipal Council building, which was even bigger than the library building, with a theatre was destroyed by detonating several tonnes of explosives by the LTTE.
The LG polls in the North and the East are significant in many ways as the National parties as well as the regional parties are contesting for all LG bodies in the two provinces with much enthusiasm.
Despite the EPRLF walking out of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and forming a new alliance with the TULF, the TNA remains accommodative of other three constituent parties in the alliance.
It is even interesting to note that several Muslims have come forward to contest in the Northern Province and their desire to field themselves as candidates in the LG polls in the North shows that the Muslims who were evicted from Jaffna in the nineties have now re-established themselves in the region where they lived amicably with the Tamils.
Kathi M. M. Sultan who was the first Muslim Mayor of Jaffna in the fifties remained a symbol Tamil-Muslim unity in the North. The Jaffna Municipal Council always had Muslim representation and until the eviction of Muslims from Jaffna a large number of Muslim students were studying in Jaffna schools as well as Muslims and Tamils interacting closely in various fields in the North.
Therefore, as far as the regional politics as well as the National politics are concerned the forthcoming fully fledged LG polls in the North and East are expected to be a catalyst to assess on which direction the present day political atmosphere in the two provinces heads.
Courtesy : CEYLON TODAY
