Hawk Narrowly Wins Sri Lanka Presidential Election

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the NYTimes,  November 19, 2005

A Hawk Narrowly Wins Sri Lanka Presidential Election
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Nov. 18 - Mahinda Rajapakse, the Sri Lankan prime
minister who spent his campaign for president honing a hawk's reputation,
narrowly won the race on Friday, raising new questions about how this
island nation, which has suffered more than 20 years of civil war, would
achieve peace. Election officials in Sri Lanka on Friday afternoon
declared Mr. Rajapakse the winner of Thursday's presidential election with
50.29 percent of the vote, as his supporters chanted, "Patriot!" outside
the election department headquarters here in the capital. His chief rival,
the former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, captured 48.4 percent of
the vote, according to official results.

Known for his more accommodating view on the peace process with the
nation's Tamil separatist rebels, Mr. Wickremesinghe appeared to have
suffered in part from a near no-show at polls in Jaffna, the northern town
with the country's largest population of ethnic minority Tamils. Election
officials declined to authorize fresh balloting there, as Mr.
Wickremesinghe demanded, his campaign office said. The election appeared
to have been deftly manipulated by a force that was absent from the
contest itself: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the ethnic
separatist group that has fought for an independent Tamil nation for 22
years.

On one hand, the crimes the Tamil Tigers are accused of, including the
assassination of Sri Lanka's foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, last
August, appeared to have pushed many Sinhalese, the majority ethnic group,
into the arms of the hard-line Mr. Rajapakse. On the other, as election
monitors in the largely Tamil north and east pointed out, violence and
intimidation by Tamil Tiger supporters kept Tamil voters, believed to be a
crucial base of support for Mr. Wickremesinghe, from going to the polls.
In other words, the Tamil Tigers, without issuing a formal boycott of
polls, seem to have rearranged the political map and helped install a
president whose ascendance makes the resumption of conflict far more
likely - at least if his election promises are to be believed.

A veteran left-of-center politician, Mr. Rajapakse has vowed to scrap a
2002 peace deal with the Tamil Tigers to draft a new one, and has resisted
the idea of allowing them any form of local autonomy. He has also rejected
an accord, struck after months of negotiation, to share tsunami
reconstruction money with the rebels, who operate as a de facto government
in the territory they control. Last December's disaster killed more than
30,000 people on the island, and the joint financing arrangement was seen
as the first steps toward a lasting reconciliation. Parts of the accord
were struck down in August by the country's Supreme Court.

"I will bring about an honorable peace to the country respecting all
communities," Mr. Rajapakse said at a news conference after the official
announcement of his election victory. No sooner had he claimed victory
than Bloomberg News reported the steepest drop in Sri Lankan stock prices
in 18 months, with the benchmark Colombo All-Share Index declining by 7.2
percent. Mr. Rajapakse, who joined hands with the country's leading
Marxist and Sinhalese nationalist forces, was elected on a platform of
economic nationalization. He is to be sworn in on Saturday.

The fate of the peace process depends in large part on how he handles the
Tamil Tigers once he becomes president. He has promised direct talks with
their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, but told voters that he would not
meet their chief demand: power-sharing. "If he approaches it as he stated
during the elections, then the future of the peace process is very bleak,"
said Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council, a nonpartisan advocacy
group. Mr. Wickremesinghe, who prepared the peace accord that Mr.
Rajapakse has vowed to revamp, had said he was amenable to a federal
solution that would give greater autonomy to the country's Tamil minority
in the north and east.

Equally important in the coming weeks is Mr. Prabhakaran's reaction. It
remains unclear whether Mr. Rajapakse's victory will embolden the Tamil
Tigers, a feared guerrilla group that commands a fleet of ground, sea and
air forces, to turn up the volume on truculence. Mr. Prabhakaran is
expected to make his annual address at the end of the month. The Tamil
Tigers did not have to call for a boycott of the election.  Turnout
figures released Friday spoke volumes for their influence. No polling
stations could be set up in territory controlled by the guerrillas. In
Jaffna, officially in government hands but under heavy influence of the
Tamil Tigers, barely 1.2 percent of the more than 700,000 voters turned
out to the polls. In eastern Batticaloa, also a heavily Tamil town where
the Tamil Tigers are challenged by a breakaway faction, voter turnout was
48.5 percent. In both areas, Mr. Wickremesinghe won 70 percent or more of
the vote.

The election ends the rule of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, whose
attempt to extend her tenure was struck down by the country's highest
court in August.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/19/international/asia/19lanka.html
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