COLOMBO, 1 April 2004 — Sri Lankans vote tomorrow in a general election that most expect will lead to a deadlocked Parliament, further dragging out efforts to end 20 years of civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels.
There has been no major fighting for more than two years, but the widely predicted hung Parliament could further put off the resumption of stalled peace talks and delay $4.5 billion in aid to rebuild the country, analysts said.
The two major rivals in the election — President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is not up for re-election, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe — differ in their approach to the peace process.
Kumaratunga dissolved Parliament, forcing the snap election, after accusing the prime minister of giving too many concessions to the Tigers.
An opinion poll yesterday showed Kumaratunga’s United People’s Freedom Alliance winning 101 seats in the 225-seat Parliament, marginally ahead of Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) and its coalition partners with 99.
The poll by Org-Smart Opinion Polls, which has a five percent margin of error, implies that neither side will get a clear mandate to carry forward the peace process.
Any possible kingmaker roles could go to a Sinhalese Buddhist party running an all-monk slate of candidates or to the Tamil National Alliance, which is backed by the Tigers.
The Buddhists are strongly opposed to any concessions for the Tigers in peace talks, while the TNA candidates are mostly proxies for the rebels.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) claims to represent the island’s minority Tamils, and says the Tamil community has been discriminated against in jobs and education by the Sinhalese majority.
Voting laws require all campaigning to end two days before election day, and Kumaratunga criticized Wickremesinghe’s economic policies at a final rally late on Tuesday.
“The country has been destroyed in every sector. Either they have started the destruction or completed it already,” she said.
“There has been no fighting for two years, but the absence of war does not mean there is peace. There has to be a long-term solution,” she added.
Wickremesinghe has campaigned solely on his record of presiding over the longest period of peace since the war started in 1983 and says he needs a new mandate to translate that into a permanent peace.
“For the first time in two decades, on one hand, elections are being held without the fear of war; on the other hand, there is a free and fair election without political interference,” he said.
“If you want a peaceful and new nation, vote for the UNP.”
Both Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe say they will resume the peace talks as soon as possible if their parties win, but the LTTE has said it would deal only with someone who had a mandate and the power.
“This is a challenge for Tamils to show the strength of Tamil nationalism,” Sutha Thangan, deputy leader of the Tigers’ political wing, said in Jaffna in the Tamil heartland in the north of the country.
Wickremesinghe held emergency talks with Norwegian truce monitors yesterday amid fears of factional war between rival Tamil Tiger rebels, officials said. He discussed the deteriorating security situation in the eastern district of Batticaloa where an election candidate and his relative were gunned down on Tuesday, officials said.
More than 1,000 Sri Lankan soldiers in full battle gear took positions in Batticaloa yesterday. Soldiers with machineguns patrolled the streets in trucks and on motorcycles while policemen stopped and checked vehicles at crucial entry points to the city, 330 km east of the capital Colombo.
Scores of Tamil residents fled their homes in the eastern town of Chenkaladi yesterday fearing reprisals after the killing of the Tamil election candidate Rajan Sathyamoorthy.
