Sri Lanka's fisheries minister, Ramalingam Chandrasekar, has claimed that the newly formed political alliances, among them this week's platform of Tamil and Muslim parties, will collapse and will do nothing to weaken the National People's Power (NPP) government.
Speaking to reporters after an event in Jaffna on Tuesday, the minister questioned the purpose of the new alliance, asking whether it had been formed to root out bribery and corruption, prevent fraud, bring criminals to justice and serve the public, or to shield those accused of corruption and financial misconduct.
Several individuals linked to the alliance, he alleged, had previously been found guilty by the courts and were currently out on bail, and the initiative amounted to an attempt to change the government before those facing legal proceedings ended up in prison. While the opposition was busy assembling coalitions, he said, the NPP was building an alliance with the people, and such combinations would have no bearing on the strength or stability of the government.
The minister did not name any individuals he had accused.
The NPP parliamentarian K. Ilankumaran went further, accusing the Tamil parties of acting as "brokers". Speaking at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the Kalvayal bridge in Chavakachcheri, he criticised the gathering held in Colombo and asked why its participants had not met in the Tamil homeland instead.
"Why did they choose to meet in Colombo? Why was a gathering not held in the Tamil areas?" he asked.
Those involved, Ilankumaran alleged, were essentially based in the southern capital and had built their lives around it. He claimed that politicians from the south who had suffered political setbacks were attempting to revive ethnic divisions in order to rebuild their influence, and that certain Tamil representatives were serving as intermediaries for those efforts rather than addressing the needs of the people. The public, he said, remained politically aware and capable of making clear decisions, and meetings held in Colombo hotels by people who claim to represent Tamil interests, while lacking engagement with communities in the North, were a matter of embarrassment.
The two men are the Sri Lankan government's principal Tamil voices in the North. Chandrasekar, a Malaiyaha Tamil from Bandarawela in the Badulla district, is a JVP member who entered parliament on the national list in November 2024 and was made fisheries minister days later. He has long been the NPP's organiser and point man in Jaffna, and chairs the consultative committees for the Jaffna and Kilinochchi districts. Ilankumaran, a former Electricity Board employee who came to the JVP through trade union work, headed the party's Jaffna list and was elected with the highest preference count of the three NPP members returned from the district, seats the party hailed as the crowning achievement of its landslide.
Neither addressed what the six parties had actually asked for. The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, the Tamil Progressive Alliance, the All Ceylon Makkal Congress, the Democratic Tamil National Alliance and the Ceylon Workers' Congress agreed on three demands at Monday's launch - a new constitution with the maximum possible devolution of power, the holding of the long-delayed provincial council elections, and action on the land seized from their communities by the military and by state agencies including the Archaeology and Forest Departments. The first two are commitments from the NPP's own August 2024 manifesto, since adopted as the government's National Policy Framework, which promised a new constitution and provincial polls within a year of taking office. Nearly two years on, neither has been delivered.