By Lydia Polgreen - When President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced late last year that he would move the presidential election up by two years and seek a fresh mandate from Sri Lanka’s war-weary electorate, he seemed like a shoo-in.
Having vanquished the fearsome Tamil Tiger insurgency in May with a no-holds-barred assault on its last stronghold, Mr. Rajapaksa enjoyed widespread adulation. The opposition parties were fractured and in disarray. No one, it seemed, could match the president’s popularity, despite deep unease about what seemed to be the increasing concentration of power in the hands of his family and rising corruption.
But to near-universal surprise, an alphabet soup of political parties has rallied around the retired general who led Sri Lanka’s army to victory against the Tamil Tigers, Sarath Fonseka.
On Tuesday, voters here will go to the polls in what has been one of the most bitterly contested elections in Sri Lankan history. The winner will preside over the reconstruction and reconciliation of a country torn apart by more than a quarter-century of ethnic conflict.
Mr. Rajapaksa has argued that he delivered on his election promise, made in 2005, to end the war, and that he can be relied upon to mend the country. But his popularity has waned in the months since the end of the war as Sri Lankans have grown impatient for prosperity. Mr. Rajapaksa has also given powerful positions in the government to relatives, rankling many Sri Lankans.
“Sri Lanka has always been a democracy,” said Waskadwa Dhammarana, a Buddhist monk who supported the president in 2005 but is now planning to vote for General Fonseka. “I am against corruption, nepotism and the antidemocratic attitude prevalent in the Rajapaksa regime.”
General Fonseka has pledged to reduce the powers of the presidency and give more authority to Parliament, a cherished goal of many parties in the fractious coalition backing him. But he is untested as a political leader, and many question his ability to lead beyond the regimented sphere of the military.
Indeed, the alliance behind General Fonseka’s candidacy is a grudging coalition that includes more than one set of archenemies. It includes hard-line Marxists and laissez-faire capitalists, hard-core nationalists who argue that minorities should submit to majority rule as well as the main Tamil and Muslim parties.
“The opposition parties have come together with the single purpose of effecting regime change,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives, a research and advocacy institute here. “Fonseka is the instrument of that change.”
The campaign has unfolded in a tense but hopeful nation that seeks to put its violent past to rest. The Tamil Tigers took up arms to defend the Tamil minority from government discrimination, but eventually became a ruthless insurgency best known for its use of child soldiers and suicide bombers.
Violence has punctuated the campaign. Election monitors have counted more than 100 episodes of violence involving firearms. At least five people have been killed.
General Fonseka has struggled to find his footing as a politician. In speeches his clipped delivery is that of a man accustomed to giving orders, not asking for votes.
“The country in the future will be free of corruption,” he commanded from the stage at a rally in the southern coastal town of Kalutara. “Democracy will be restored. Your children will have a bright future.”
For many of the general’s supporters, the concern is more a matter of ousting Mr. Rajapaksa.
“He has constructed a power center that is controlled only by his family,” said Japudaya Nagoda Kanutara, a 47-year-old supermarket clerk who voted for Mr. Rajapaksa in 2005. “At that time we only wanted to end the war, but after that sacrifice we feel we are getting nothing. Sri Lanka needs a change.”
Mr. Rajapaksa, a flesh-pressing politician whose flashy rallies draw huge crowds, has found himself on the defensive, and his campaign has pulled out all the stops. His grinning face beams down from billboards and posters all across the country. The government has even added his portrait to a new 1,000-rupee note.
Critics have accused him of using state resources, like helicopters to hop around the teardrop-shaped island, to wage his campaign, though his spokesman denied this. State-controlled media have heavily favored him.
Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group, said in a report that the two main state-owned television channels devoted 98.5 percent of their news coverage to Mr. Rajapaksa.
Mr. Rajapaksa’s rallies have been packed with fervent supporters who venerate him as a bringer of peace.
“He ended the war,” said A. D. R. Premarathna, who owns a small printing shop. “Now we can live without fear.”
Mr. Premarathna waited for five hours in the baking sun with his wife and children to secure a spot in the front row of Mr. Rajapaksa’s rally in Kalutara. “I know he will deliver on his promise to bring prosperity for my children,” he said.
One issued that has hardly figured in the election campaign is the question of human rights violations that may have been committed by the military in the fight against the Tigers. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped on a small stretch of beach where they were held hostage as human shields by the ragged remains of the insurgency’s leadership.
The United Nations counted 7,000 dead in the first phase of the final battle, but no reliable count exists for the last, deadliest weeks of the fighting. Sri Lanka has resisted calls for an international war crimes investigation. After the war, about 300,000 Tamils who had been trapped with the Tigers were detained in squalid, closed camps.
No matter who wins, the competitiveness of the election has already had a profound effect on Sri Lanka, said Rukshana Nanayakkara, deputy executive director of Transparency International Sri Lanka, an anticorruption advocacy organization. The emergence of a credible opposition candidate pushed the government to speed the release of displaced Tamils held in camps, and ease restrictions on journalists, he said.
“This was an opportunity through the campaign to challenge the government,” he said. “Regardless of who wins, that has been a very good thing.”
© The New York Times
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