Varatharaja Perumal: First, last and only North-Eastern Chief Minister

THE provincial councils scheme, implemented since 1988, has seen a number of chief ministers being elected by the various provincial councils over the years. Although the norm has been for each province to have a single chief minister, there has been a notable exception in the past.

- By D.B.S. Jeyaraj

In November 1988, elections were held together for the temporarily merged Northern and Eastern Provinces. Annamalai Varatharaja Perumal of the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) was elected as the first chief minister of what was then called the North-Eastern Provincial Council.

Varatharaja Perumal known generally as Perumal and Varathar, served as North-Eastern Chief Minister from 10 December 1988 to 1 March 1990. It was indeed creditable that Perumal took the bold step of accepting the office of Chief Minister in the newly setup North-Eastern Council then. The leadership qualities he displayed at the time, though controversial, were commendable. Had he not taken the plunge and become the pioneering North Eastern Chief Minister under very difficult circumstances, all the positive gains of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord may not have accrued to Sri Lankan Tamils.

Perumal’s tenure as Chief Minister between December 1988 and March 1990 was quite unenviable. On the one hand, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) considered him a traitor to the Tamil cause and began targeting him. The Tigers also sabotaged all efforts by the North-Eastern Council to address the day-to-day problems of Tamils.

On the other hand, Sinhala hawks, including the then President Ranasinghe Premadasa, portrayed Perumal as an Indian puppet. There was marked hostility towards Perumal and the North-Eastern Council on the part of the southern political establishment and bureaucracy. All attempts at achieving meaningful devolution under the Provincial Council scheme were stymied.