The Meanings Of Wigneswaran

By S Sathananthan -July 31, 2013 |

Dr. S Sathananthan

The Tamil National Alliance has boomed Justice C.V. Wigneswaran as its chief ministerial candidate. There is no gainsaying his impressive legal career and that he is an upright individual akin to the metaphorical Palmyrah tree. The Alliance is promoting him as an able interlocutor who may, as northern Chief Minister (CM), command respect in Colombo, New Delhi, London and Washington. He is expected to tackle onerous tasks, including re-building bridges between Tamils and Muslims and striving for a ‘Marshal Plan, Reparations and an Economic Programme’ for the Northern Province.

Heady stuff by any measure if sullied by the deafening silence on pursuing accountability for crimes against humanity committed in the build up to Mullivaaikkal and post-Mullivaaikkal.

The all-important political track record, however, is conspicuously lacking. Justice Wigneswaran’s formative experience in statecraft is as a government servant schooled in the benign tradition of dissenting, politely of course, within State-sanctioned parameters. He is a political novice with no appreciable history of defending Tamils’ national rights either with the pen or on the streets. In his speech accepting the post of Supreme Court Judge (2001), Justice Wigneswaran had comforted Sinhalese nationalists Tamils don’t threaten their power: ‘The vast majority of the denizens [sic] of the north and east seek the restoration of their rights and not devolution of power’; that, while the LTTE was simultaneously leading the armed resistance. Evidently he naively believes rights could be won and defended without power, unaware of the time-tested truth: those without power cannot defend freedom.

Why, then, has TNA leader R Sampanthan, sporting more than four decades of political experience, nominated Wigneswaran for CM and trotted out his laudable non-political attributes as ludicrous strengths essential to head the Northern Provincial Council (NPC)?

Sampanthan’s monstrously incompetent leadership of the Alliance is under intense criticism in Tamil society and especially among the more radical, younger Tamil politicians grouped within the dissenting Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF), who demand a larger devolution of power not provided for in the decentralisation under the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution (13A). They may well marginalise the Alliance in the forthcoming NPC elections since the TNA, after extended sabre rattling against the Amendment, is edging towards caving in to Sinhalese nationalists. But the Alliance risks political suicide by jettisoning devolution, to which they long paid lip service (satyagrahas, etc), especially when Tamil areas are under the jack-boot and Palestine-style changes to ‘facts on the ground’ are being rammed through.                 Read More