What is the reason for this drastic shift? Do the leaders of the Tamil nationalist movement think they were betrayed by Sri Lankan Tamil polity?
The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea, Mao Tse-Tung said.
Were the slain leaders of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) among people in their last phase of struggle? If they were not, was it a fault of the people? If the answer is yes, who decided the nature of this polity in the last thirty years?
Tamil polity of Sri Lanka is in the most pathetic situation of their history now. No need to mention the harsh conditions they undergo in the present context.
The remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) that are well-secured in the economic and social fortitudes in the green pastures of Western Europe have betrayed them. They are let alone to deal with the Sinhala dominated Colombo government on their own. The 'knowledgeable' expatriate patriots that are called Tamil Diaspora wait and see until the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) that won 14 parliamentary seats in the recent elections fail to achieve a negotiated settlement with the Rajapaksa regime. They wait until Rajapaksa regime fails and an anarchy is built up in the state.
TNA may fail not because they are foolish to trust the Sinhala chauvinist rulers. They may fail because of the folly of the Sinhala polity and their leaders that fail to build up trust among the communities that live in the island.
Rajapaksa regime will definitely fail if they will not change and if they will proceed in the ways they are in now. However, they will fail in a different context after exposing the country into a rapid capitalist growth and a social change that follows it.
This is the same change the LTTE and the brethren Sinhala peasant movement People's Liberation Front (JVP) were terrified by the United National Party (UNP) regime during 2001 - 2004. These two forces joined hands in political underneath to defeat the UNP's 'Regaining Sri Lanka' programme that was launched in a neo-liberalist pro-Western context.
Now the same capitalist programme is set forth by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime but in a very anti-democratic and a propagandistic anti-Western outlook.
As same as the UNP targeted to obtain a massive loan of Rs. 4.5 billion from West, the Rajapaksa regime is obtaining massive loans from China and open financial markets chaining generations of Sri Lankans in a massive debt burden. Growth strategy is same, developing infrastructure to attract foreign investment. One visible deviation is the existence of strong state enterprises. But one should not mistake them as public enterprises. They are sheer companies from which the political and official elite profit.
The final solution of the UNP and the Rajapaksa regime for the ethnic problem is the same, i.e., liquidizing the Tamil nationalist armed forces. UNP wanted to do it through a negotiated settlement but the Rajapaksas resorted to ethnic war although the pundits argue the peace achieved through it is not sustainable.
The social change that is to follow the targeted rapid growth is yet to be observed. All in all, the mass movements like the LTTE and the JVP have to go for a serious retrospection and they have to review and make drastic changes in their strategies if they want to re-emerge as deciding factors of the politics of Sri Lanka.
