Eelam Tamils are yet again at a critical juncture. The pending Northern Provincial Council (NPC) election has brought about a lot of noise. The Eelam Tamil political discourse has taken a turn for the worse. As mentioned in the previous post, one of the ways soft power is exercised is through agenda-setting. So when you are invited to the table, your influence over the outcome is nil.
Sri Lanka and few international players are bent on containing the Tamil national question to the incompetent 13 Amendment. It seems, so far, that TNA has been co-opted into this plan. Tamils are distracted by the noise about unity. Tamils are forced to think about the day to day problems with urgency. The important question of Tamil nation’s future is once again ignored in favor of addressing this manufactured, tactical, agenda.
A politically inspiring and spirited discourse, dissecting TNA’s reasons for contesting and what it hopes to achieve, is missing.
TNA has not clearly and unambiguously said what this election means to the Tamils. No comment on if 13A is the “final solution”. No comment on the need for an International Independent Investigation of war crimes. Tamil people are being sold on false Choices in the upcoming election.
There is a common practice in product marketing. A company bundles a product and certain services together and prices it accordingly. Then, to convince the consumer that bundle is the greatest value on offer, they create 2 other choices. One at a much higher price point making that choice unattractive. And another at a lower price but with a much lower value. So when sandwiched between those two choices, the one that company wants you to choose looks much more reasonable for its value. Many smart consumers get suckered into this false choice unwittingly.
The choice of voting for TNA is sandwiched between the low value proposition of preventing someone like Douglas Devananda winning and the high cost choice of 13 plus: with an accompanying marketing message that 13A is a must and is urgent. Once we have 13A, we can afford to ask for something more in the future goes the sales pitch. Without a spirited challenge and in conditions of political monopoly, this leads to inefficient choices.
There is another area where this is practiced: in Magic. Not the sleight of hand kind. In a straight forward card trick. A magician puts 3 cards on the table. The big reveal is in the middle card and he already knows it. He wants you to end up with that middle card. Yet he needs to make it look like you are making all the choices. He asks you to choice a card. Let's say, you chose the card on the left. He does some smalltalk and asks “you are you sure”?. You insist. He says “good” and throws away that card. He asks you to choose again between the remaining two cards. This time you chose the one on the right. He makes his usual jokes while reminding everyone that YOU are the one making the choices. And again throws away that card. He then does his abracadabra and voila, you end up with the middle card as the final choice. He does the big reveal. Had you chosen the middle card the 1st time, he still would have done his usual small talk and jokes. But this time he would have said, “You are great. We are going to keep this card and throw away the other two”. Had you chosen the middle card the second time, while still reminding you that YOU are making the choices, he would have said “ this time, we are going to throw away the other card”. Moral of the story. A magician does not reveal the rules upfront when he asks you to make the choices. He makes up the rules, which card to keep or throw away, after you make your choices.
If TNA wants to get into magic, then they should be ready to have their tricks exposed.
And TNA should not put Tamils in a situation having to rationalize their choices under cognitive dissonance.
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