The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) has secured a majority in the Jaffna Municipal Council, marking a significant political development in the region.
ITAK General Secretary M. A. Sumanthiran announced that Vivekanandaraja Madivadani of ITAK has been elected as the Mayor of the Jaffna Municipal Council.
She received 19 votes in the mayoral election, with support from the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), and the United National Party (UNP). Members of the National People’s Party (NPP) abstained from voting.
Historically, the Jaffna Municipal Council, established in 1949 as a successor to Jaffna Urban Council, has always functioned well and been held in high regard the rest of the country.
The assassination in 1975 of Sri Lanka Freedom Party representative Mayor Alfred Duraiyappah, followed by the assassinations of Mayors Nadarajah Raviraj and Sarojini Yogeswaran, both women, which took place in 2006, put the Jaffna Municipal Council in dire straits with hardly any opportunity to develop the city of Jaffna.
In 1985, the state-of-the-art Jaffna Municipal Council building which closely resembled the Jaffna Public library, was destroyed by the LTTE to prevent any move by the armed forces based inside the Jaffna Fort to take over the building to expand their presence in Jaffna city. The LTTE detonated the entire building by placing powerful explosives on all sides of the building.
From the time the Jaffna Municipal Council building was built in 1936, a garden in the front yard of the building was maintained with nicely trimmed trees. Civic receptions were hosted for foreign and local dignitaries who visited Jaffna. Foremost among all receptions was the one hosted by late Mayor of Jaffna Alfred Duraiyappah for late Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike when she arrived in Jaffna to declare open the University of Jaffna.
It was during the period of Mayor Alfred Duraiyappah that Jaffna city got a face lift with new supermarket buildings in the town. He had even plans to modernise the Jaffna city limits with more parks and avenues as well as shopping complexes to attract tourists from the South as well as from foreign countries.
However, his dreams were short lived and he became the very first target of LTTE leader Veluppillai Prabhakaran. Alfed Duraiyappah was shot dead when he visited Ponnalai Varatharaja Perumal Kovil on 27th July, 1975.
Following the untimely death of Alfred Duraiyappah, the significance of Jaffna Municipal Council gradually started shrinking, with Jaffna city rapidly turning into a ‘ghost city’.
Without proper mayoral administration and with militant outfits taking cover in the areas around the Jaffna Municipal Council limits to launch attacks towards the troops based inside the Jaffna fort, the elegant Jaffna Municipal Council lost its significance to a great extent.
Nadarajah Raviraj, an attorney at law by profession who was elected as Mayor of Jaffna from the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) was assassinated in 2006 in Colombo.
The first female Mayor of Jaffna to be assassinated was Sarojini Yogeswaran. She was the wife of former Jaffna Parliamentarian V. Yogeswaran, who was assassinated along with TULF leader Appapillai Amirthalingam on July 13th 1989 in Colombo.
Sarojini Yogeswaran was assassinated at her home in Jaffna by two LTTE women cadres in 1998. Before entering politics Sarojini served as a teacher at the Vembadi Girls High school in Jaffna. She was a highly respected teacher and an amiable person according to her students.
In 2009 Yogeswari Patkumaraja became the 25th Mayor of Jaffna and she was a member from the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP).
Soon after peace returned to the North in 2009, a new Municipal Council building was built on the same site where the majestic old Jaffna Municipal Council building had existed. However, the new building is not a patch on the old building and it does not reflect the Dravidian architectural image of the previous building at all.
As far as the history of the local government administrations in the country are concerned, Jaffna Municipal Council will go down in the history as most ill-fated council in the country with the assassinations of four mayors, as well as the destruction of the state-of-the-art Municipal Council building.
