Unity Of Minority Politicians In The National Government

By Aboobacker Rameez –September 6, 2015

Dr. Aboobacker Rameez

The country marks another historical milestone with the selection of Mr R. Sampanthan, a Tamil MP by ethnicity, as the opposition leader of the Parliament. It was Mr Amirthaligam MP who occupied the post of opposition leader of the Parliament in 1977. Scholars posit that this new turn of event symbolizes a healthy dimension of democracy and is a sign of peace and reconciliation restoring in the country, following the silent revolution that took place in January 8, 2015.

Debates on the opposition leader

This selection stirred a stiff resistance among the hardcore Sinhalese in and out of the Parliament saying that this could lead to a division of the country and the Tamils would take an upper hand in all the affairs. However, this superficial argument can be debunked under several dimensions:

1) Mr Sampanthan, by being the opposition leader, cannot do anything silly to compromise the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country, given that the national government(some people dub it as a coalition government) has been formed,

2) it is naïve to argue that Sampanthan should not have been selected as the opposition leader, thanks to his ascribed ethnicity; it is indeed notable that this is not the first time that a Tamil MP has been selected as the opposition leader,

3) all those who excoriate and vent their anger and frustration on the selection of Sampanthan turned a blind eye when the powerful Eastern LTTE Leader, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, popularly known as Karuna, was made as the Vice President of SLFP, a MP and subsequently as the powerful minister in the Mahindagovernment, and

4) while Karuna engaged in a fierce battle, for the sole purpose of attaining the Tamil Ealam, with the government forces before being drawn in with Mahinda government, Sampanthan entered into the democratic realm of the Parliament and fought for the legitimate concerns of Tamil speaking people over the years.

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