AT THE Centre for Monitoring Election Violence in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, a man approaches the desk of Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, the organisation’s co-convenor.
“We’ve got another one,” he says. The body of an activist with a pro-government Tamil party in Sri Lanka’s east has turned up in a river after he was allegedly murdered by workers from a rival political group.
The incident brings to six the estimated number killed ahead of Sri Lanka’s violent presidential election tomorrow, in which voters will decide whether Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent president, or his erstwhile army commander, retired General Sarath Fonseka, should take the top job. The violence is hardly surprising in a country emerging from nearly three decades of ethnic civil war and facing one of the most important elections in its post-colonial history.
“This election is going to be significant as far as getting reconciliation and unity are concerned, and if we’re going to have constitutional reform and economic development,” Mr Saravanamuttu says. “This is the election that will be the first step towards rebuilding Sri Lanka.”
President Rajapaksa is credited with delivering the crushing defeat last May of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the killing of its elusive leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, who fought for more than 25 years for a separate state for the Tamil minority in the island’s north and east.
Gen Fonseka is regarded as the military mastermind behind the victory over the LTTE.
After becoming disaffected with Mr Rajapaksa’s treatment of him following the war, the general defected to the opposition, which saw him as the perfect candidate to take on the popular president.
His partners include Sri Lanka’s main opposition party, the United National party, and the Tamil National Alliance, the ethnic Tamil parliamentary grouping that only six months ago had viewed the general as a war criminal. “What the general did was neutralise the president’s war victory propaganda to some extent,” says Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council in Colombo.
The two-way race has re-opened democratic debate in a country that many had feared was sliding towards dictatorship.
Growing international calls for investigations into alleged war crimes against the Tamils had put some pressure on the president. But with no credible opposition, he decided to play on his popularity among Sri Lanka’s ethnic Sinhalese and Buddhist majority and call an early election.
That was before Gen Fonseka tapped into growing disaffection among voters in the south with rising petrol and food prices as well as corruption.
The main pro-opposition paper, the Sunday Leader, yesterday quoted Gen Fonseka alleging the upkeep of Mr Rajapaksa’s oversized government, consisting of 132 ministers, was costing 4 billion Sri Lankan rupees (€25 million) a year. This was nearly half the amount it spends on social welfare.
He is also courting the Tamil minority by promising to implement constitutional reforms to give them more freedoms.
But Tamils are furious with Mr Rajapaksa for keeping hundreds of thousands of non-combatants in detention camps after the war and failing to follow up the conflict with a meaningful political reconciliation process.– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)