Sri Lanka, Oct. 25 — Electoral politics has an uncanny way of grabbing the least expected of opportunities in the battle for votes. The General Court of the European Union would have had little knowledge, if any, of how its recent ruling on the designation of the LTTE as a terrorist organization by the European Union, in 2006, would impact on the politics of Sri Lanka.

The EU has issued a statement that in understanding the implication of the Court’s Ruling it is important to remember that it is a legal ruling of a court; it is not a political decision taken by the EU Governments. That does sound good, but one cannot ignore the fact that the LTTE, even after its defeat in May 2009, remains very much the stuff of politics in Sri Lanka, especially considering all the pain and suffering it put the people of Sri Lanka through for nearly three decades.

…There is also the thinking of Dr Rohan Gunaratna, who heads the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore who has said: “The court did not conduct a substantive assessment of classification of the LTTE as a terrorist group.”