The Sri Lankan parliament has installed Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader Rajavarothiam Sampanthan as the opposition leader. Speaker Karu Jayasuriya informed the House: “I recognise Rajavarothiam Sampanthan as the leader of the opposition.”
The appointment sought to undercut former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s influence. Rajapaksa was beaten in the January presidential elections by President Maithripala Sirisena, after a regime-change operation orchestrated by Washington, which opposes Rajapaksa due to his close relations to China.
In the August 17 general elections, however, none of the parties won an absolute majority in the 225-seat parliament. Though Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) won 106 seats, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) led by the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP), of which Rajapaksa is a member, won 93 seats. The TNA received 16 seats.
A “national unity” government has been formed based on the UNP and a pro-Sirisena faction of the UPFA.
Before Sampanthan’s appointment as opposition leader, pro-Rajapaksa loyalists in the UPFA, who did not join the government, wrote to President Sirisena and asked him to recognise them as an “independent” faction. This would have meant appointing Rajapaksa supporter Kumara Welgama as opposition leader. Sirisena rejected the letter, preferring Sampanthan.
Media hailed the appointment as a historic milestone and the sign of a broad shift of the government’s position in favour of the Tamil minority. The Associated Press wrote: “Sampanthan’s appointment despite early opposition by some ethnic Sinhalese leaders is seen as a reassurance to the Tamil community of their place in national politics. Tamils have long complained of discrimination in education, government jobs and governance.”
Similarly, in a Lankasri Tamil radio interview, Jaffna University Professor K. T. Ganesalingam said: “There is a good governance transformation in the South. The opposition leader post could be used to make diplomatic inroads within the international community for articulating the interests of Tamils.”
The last time that a Tamil politician became opposition leader was in 1977, when Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) leader A. Amirthalingam led parliamentary opposition to a UNP government.
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–K. Nesan