Sainthamaruthu: The Untold Horror Story
Sainthamaruthu is the Sri Lankan equal of Kandahar of Afghanistan and Idlib of Syria – the Sunni extremist capital. It was the safe haven of Zaharan and his band of terrorists and his birth place. Creating a separate Urban Council for Sainthamaruthu will only accelerate extremist activities and remove all grassroots level checks and balances. (There are no 24/7 military presence anyway making own administrative checks and balances critically important.).
It’s road to separation has a long history and root causes that are not apparent. The matter was hush-hushed from media and public discussion for obvious reasons. Sainthamaruthu was part of Kalmunai Municipal Council until 2020. The entirety of the Kalmunai area is a Muslim majority area with some Tamil and Sinhala presence. Sainthamaruthu within that is a Muslim only area. That too, with an extreme version of Islam than the rest of Kalmunai. By turning it into a separate political and administrative unit, it now loses checks and balances by multiethnic councilors it had when under Kalmunai MC. It also loses moderation by moderate Muslims of rest of Kalmunai.
The road to separation started more than 30 years ago taking little from successive governments. A breakthrough came at the 1999 presidential election when Chandrika promised to create a separate Divisional Secretariat for Sainthamaruthu. It was granted just two days before the 1999 presidential election in exchange for a few votes. That had a new impetus for separatism. Two decades later under very similar circumstances, it was split into a separate Muslim only Urban Council.
This is the beginning of a very dangerous trend of creating mono-ethnic Local Government bodies throughout the country. Pradeshiya Sabhas, Urban Councils and Municipal Councils are the grassroots level political units elected by the people. They are critically important as they have most interaction with the people. Creating mono-ethnic and extremist LG bodies predict a very violent and separatist future for Sri Lanka.
In the near term, the Sammanthurai- Sainthamaruthu axis (both Muslim only political LG bodies) will become the dividing line of a larger and extremely influential mono-ethnic ghetto that will expand westwards and southwards. Don’t forget that the Eastern Provincial Council and all parliamentarians from these areas also support whatever that goes on there. In other words, the Sainthamaruthu event is the culmination of the coming together of the entire hierarchy of political power – LG level, Provincial Level, Parliamentary Level and the Presidential level (the matter was a presidential election promise in 1999 and 2019). A stunningly strategic move that covers all sides.
To make matter worse, a patriotic politician who had an unparalleled military career from Ampara has been called to Colombo to contest the election. That creates an enormous vacuum in the East further encouraging separatism and extremism.
In the medium term, other Pradeshiya Sabhas, Urban Councils and Municipal Councils with sizable minority concentrations within them will also demand and get separate LG units. These include Colombo, Puttlam, Kandy and Galle MCs, parts of Nuwara Eliya, Kalutara, Gampaha and Mannar Districts. Chandrika also divided Colombo DS Division into Colombo and Thimbirigasyaya DS Division. Very likely it will have its own UC soon which will drastically reduce Sinhala representation at the CMC – the largest, richest and most strategic LG body in the country. Thereafter CMC area will have a 70% Muslim majority.
This is a far more effective separatist strategy than the strategy followed by Tamils. Grabbing 37% of the island in a single attempt was bound to fail and it did. Tamil strategy also involved confronting the military and Sinhala politicians. That was another reason for its lack of success. However, the Sainthamaruthu strategy is likely to succeed slow and steady in various parts of the island. It is reminiscent of the story of the camel”. Unfortunately for politically divided Sri Lanka, when people realize these home truths it will be far too late. Obviously someone has misled the president to open floodgates of Balkanization of the crucial grassroots level of governance based on mono-ethnic enclaves.
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