Sri Lanka Vote Hinges on Tamils

By Matthew Rosenberg - This country's presidential vote Tuesday pits two chief architects of the country's defeat last year of Tamil separatists, underscoring the political divide that remains after 26 years of ethnic strife.

The leading contenders among the field's 22 candidates are President Mahinda Rajapaksa, elected five years ago on a promise to crush the Tigers, and retired Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who oversaw the rebels' battlefield annihilation in May. Most Sri Lankans view them as war heroes. They are seen as war criminals by the country's minority Tamils, who could end up deciding the outcome of a vote observers say is too close to call.

The war pitted the government, dominated by Sri Lanka's predominately Buddhist Sinhalese majority, against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who fought for a homeland for the largely Hindu ethnic group.

Neither front-runner has a plan to address lingering Tamil grievances, including the 100,000 Tamil civilians believed to be in internment camps. The ugly and at times violent election campaign, meanwhile, has exposed just how badly the war stunted this island nation's democratic institutions.

Mr. Fonseka says he wants to restore the country's battered international reputation. His choice of moderate political allies has raised hope among diplomats and human-rights activists that he could curtail what they see as the Rajapaksa administration's often humiliating treatment of Tamils, the arbitrary detention of perceived enemies, and the alleged assassination of government critics.

The government denies any role in the killings and says it has treated Tamils fairly.

Mr. Rajapaska remains popular among Sinhalese Sri Lankans largely for his role in ending what had become one of the globe's longest-running civil wars. The Tigers were known for their use of suicide-bomb vests, and their demise has brought Sri Lanka closer to the prosperous island paradise the government long sought to portray in tourist brochures. The streets of Colombo, the capital, are no longer dotted by soldiers and checkpoints.

Sri Lanka's economy is also rebounding. The government estimates the economy will grow about 6% this year. The International Monetary Fund, in a show of confidence, on Thursday upgraded Sri Lanka's status to what it calls a middle-income emerging market, which means it has had a relative high per capita annual income—now around $4,400—for at least three years and that it can reliably borrow on international financial markets.

But Mr. Fonseka's hero status is equal to the president's. He has seized on allegations of corruption and on Mr. Rajapaksa's reliance on family members—a number of whom, including his two brothers, serve in key government positions—to cut into the president's support.

The result is a split Sinhalese vote, and the prospect that the race will be decided by Tamils, who make up about 18% of Sri Lanka's 21 million people. Mr. Rajapaksa was first elected in 2005, largely because Tamils heeded a Tiger call to boycott the vote.

The Tigers weren't universally supported by Tamils, but in their absence there are few advocates for the community's demands for equality and autonomy in Tamil-majority areas of the north and east.

Most Tamils hold Messrs. Rajapaksa and Fonseka accountable for war abuses. Thousands of Tamil civilians—the numbers remain unclear—were killed in the war's final weeks after the army trapped them and the last Tigers on a patch of land along Sri Lanka's northeastern coast. Roughly 100,000 people, most of them Tamil, died in the war.

Many Tamils appear to be lining up behind Mr. Fonseka.

"Under the current regime, all the doors are locked to us," said Mano Ganesan, who heads the Democratic People's Front, a small Tamil party. Larger Tamil parties, like the Tamil National Alliance, have also lined up behind Mr. Fonseka.

"The president has destroyed us. We have no hope if he is re-elected," said Krishan Ganeshananthan, a 42-year-old Tamil construction worker in Colombo. Attending a Fonseka rally in a heavily Tamil suburb, Mr. Ganeshananthan said he wasn't sure whether he would vote. "I don't think these people like us," he said of the two candidates.

With questions remaining over whether Tamils will turn out n large numbers, observers say the race is too close to call. There has been little independent polling. Both camps say their own polling, which they haven't released, show their man ahead but within the margin of error.

With the race tight, the campaign has turned increasingly violent. Each side accuses the other of intimidating voters, and at least four people have been killed.

On Friday, a bomb destroyed the car and damaged the home of a wealthy Colombo businessman tied to Mr. Fonseka, police said. The government condemned the blast, while the opposition alleged Mr. Rajapaksa's supporters were behind it. Police said they were investigating.

There have been other troubling signs. Election Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake this week expressed frustration that the police and public officials were not following orders to take down unlawfully posted campaign posters, most of them the president's.

Even government officials acknowledge that state-owned media, accustomed to toeing the government line during three decades of war, is blatantly pro-Rajapaksa.

"They have made a decision to support the president," said Mr. Rajapaksa's spokesman, Lucien Rajakarunanayake, of the two state owned television stations.
—Thavayoganathan Sajitharan contributed to this article.

© The Wall Street Journal

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