Voters in the tsunami-battered island of Sri Lanka elevated their hardline prime minister to the role of president in an election yesterday, sparking fears of unrest after days of poll violence.
The office of Mahinda Rajapakse appealed for calm as the election commission declared him the winner by 50,29% to 48,38%. Rajapakse’s victory appeared to be largely due to nationalists among the majority Buddhist Sinhalese population. The prime minister had advocated a tough stance against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who waged a bloody civil war for two decades until a peace pact was brokered in 2002.
Rajapakse, who was 60 on Friday, has pledged to review the stalled peace process and not share political power or tsunami aid with the Tigers. He repeatedly insisted his hard line could lead to peace. ”I am not a candidate for war … but it has to be an honourable peace,” he said after voting in southern Sri Lanka.
The new president, who also courted radical religious parties previously considered beyond the political pale, beat Ranil Wickremesinghe, the former prime minister who made peace with the Tamils.
Wickremesinghe on Friday claimed the election was flawed and that his defeat was a blow to efforts to forge a lasting peace with the Tamil rebels. ”There is no Sri Lankan mandate,” he told a news conference. ”What is worrisome is the future path for Sri Lanka.”
Wickremesinghe called the polls in the Tamil strongholds in the north and east ”flawed”, saying that ”a vast number of voters were prevented in exercising their franchise” because of the rebel boycott. He filed a petition for a fresh ballot but the commission rejected it.
The international community had appreciated Wickremesinghe’s pro-business policies and a softer line with the Tamils but he found less appeal with domestic voters, especially the Sinhalese who fear the country might be partitioned into Tamil and Sinhalese states.
Hopes for an accord with the Tigers emerged briefly after the tsunami last December, which killed almost 35 000 people in Sri Lanka, but have since evaporated.
The new president’s election ends dynastic rule in Sri Lanka, with the departure of Chandrika Kumaratunga, whose father and mother had been prime ministers of the country. Like Rajapakse, she was seen as a hardliner but later moved to the political centre.
Backstory
Left-of-centre Mahinda Rajapakse styles himself a man of the people with grassroots support among the island’s Sinhalese majority, particularly hardline Marxists and nationalists who detest the Tamil Tiger rebels. A lawyer by trade, he entered Parliament in 1970 and has held the labour, fisheries and highways portfolios. He has ruled out a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils and vows to axe a plan to share $3-billion in tsunami aid with the Tigers. – Guardian Unlimited Â