Eastern Province Keeps its Identity

Dilrook Kannangara

There are some interesting repercussions of the demerger of the two provinces merged 19 years ago under duress and terror. These two provinces have completely different demographic features, cultures and economic aspirations. Eastern province has almost equal number of the three main races making up our nation. They have always been harmonious to each other in spite of strong and persistent efforts by terrorists to flare up ethnic intolerance. Whereas in the north, mostly tamils are allowed to live by the terrorists. With all due respect to their democratic and cultural aspirations, they are miles apart from the eastern tamils. It is the recognition of these soft issues that bear prominence in the separation of these two provinces. However, the terrorists - true to their kind- would not recognize these matters of human interest. They will continue with their usual terror campaign to split the nation. The NGOs and other LTTE henchmen will be critical of allowing legal separate status of the easterners.

But the separation will bring about opportunities to democratically dispel the terror claim of a tamil homeland. Provincial council elections will be held in the eastern province with a possible anti-LTTE coalition winning and championing the specific aspirations of the easterners. The IC (international community) will have no option but to bow down to the people’s choice! It will put pressure on the LTTE to allow democratic, multi-party elections in the northern province. Isolated in a land mass without people to call subjects, devoid of (eastern) cadres to do all the dirty work and without the ‘grainery of the tamil ealam’, the terrorists will wither into the jungles of the Vanni again. This will reverse the ‘sole representative’ enthronement of the LTTE by ranil wickremasinhe-hakeem-thondaman-chandrasekaran group. International media organizations that aligns LTTE with tamils as a matter of a factual assumption will rethink their error.

On the security screen there will be some promising developments. Threats to the Yala sanctuary and the Kataragama holy shrine will disappear as the growing public anger on terrorists and divisions make it impossible to engage in terror activities in the deep east.
Also the much anticipated LTTE infiltration into the lives of the estate community will be as impossible as can be.

This is the dawn of a new era for the easterners, the end of the forced and unhappy marriage for a ‘temporary time span’ of 19 long and cruel years marred by genocides in Sinhala villages, killings of worshipping Muslims and the devastation of education, cultural identity and economic ambitions of eastern Tamils. Lets hope that the other politicians will learn from this and be more proactive on matters of human interest.