I interpret the heavy voter turn out in the Tamil majority areas of Sri Lanka as a negative vote cast against Mahinda Rajapaksa. The vote was a condemnation of his conduct of the war and his anti-Tamil policies in the post-war context. I do not think that the Tamil vote can be understood as a positive endorsement of Maithripala Sirisena's candidacy.
The Tamil people are skeptical about Mr. Sirisena delivering on any of the key Tamil demands - a political solution to the ethnic conflict beyond the unitary state, accountability for crimes committed during the war, demilitarisation, release of Tamil political detainees, return of land taken over by the military etc. Sirisena during the campaign had taken positions contrary to Tamil interests.
The Tamil Civil Society Forum in its statement on the presidential elections hence took up the position that they cannot explicitly support the Mr. Sirisena's candidacy. It, however, noted categorically that there could be no vote for the incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa. This was not a call for a boycott. What the Tamil Civil Society Forum did was to give expression to the radical inadequacies of the agenda of the political parties in the South to bring about real change in the lives of the Tamils. We left the Tamils to decide their vote by their own conscience. That conscience has spoken definitively in its desire to oust Rajapaksa.
The Tamil National Alliance decided to explicitly call for a vote for Mr. Sirisena and there is much responsibility now on its shoulders to hold the Sirisena Presidency to account for the support that they extended without conditions. The International Community also has to recognize that despite the change of guard in Colombo that the Tamils believe that domestic mechanisms would not work and that the search for accountability through international processes will have to continue.
( Kumaravadivel Guruparan is spokesperson, Tamil Civil Society Forum & Lecturer in Law, University of Jaffna)
