The Hindu Business Line : Sri Lanka on election mode

The Lakshman Kadirgamar killing has brought back into focus the peace process that had taken the back-seat with the imminent announcement of elections in Sri Lanka. Now all eyes are on the three main contenders — Mr Mahindra Rajapakse, Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mrs Chandrika Kumaratunga — as they play their majority and minority cards to trump one another up, says Rasheeda Bhagat, who is in Colombo watching the game begin.

EVEN BEFORE the brutal assassination of Sri Lanka's well-respected Foreign Minister, Mr Lakshman Kadirgamar, last Friday night, almost everyone in Colombo was describing the peace process as either being "in a limbo" or "non-existent". With all eyes on the elections — both presidential and Parliamentary — that are expected to be announced in a week or two, the peace process had virtually taken a back seat, until it was forced onto people's consciousness by the Kadirgamar assassination.

Kadirgamar's killing by a sniper's bullet, as he stepped out of the swimming pool in his heavily-guarded Colombo home, has strengthened voices in the south that have always been opposed to entering into any kind of a peace arrangement or dialogue with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Many hardline Sinhala nationalists in the south believe that the LTTE can never be trusted and that it was only buying time under the guise of the peace process and ceasefire to strengthen itself militarily.

Mr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, told Business Line that though in a state of limbo — and even before the assassination of Kadirgamar — "the key agreement within the peace process seems to be under constant and serious challenge... there have been a number of killings, a problem with the movement of the LTTE armed cadre and child recruitment continues. We have come to a situation on the ground as far as the intensification of tension is concerned which could well be described as the closest that we've come to hostilities since the ceasefire was signed in 2002."

He feels that the effective suspension of the Post Tsunami Operations Management Structure (PTOMS) by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court in granting relief to petitioners from the JVP (Janata Vimukti Peramuna) and the JUP "has the danger of this agreement also being cast among all those agreements over the last so many years, which Tamil nationalists in particular, will look on and say, `Look even if we sign agreements with the state of Sri Lanka, they can never be operational, or implemented'."

Though suspended, what was a positive and "to be welcomed was that the apex court did not raise any problems with regard to the legitimacy or legality of the PTOMS agreement and the President was able to sign agreements with the LTTE." This strengthened the scope for exploring federal solutions. But with the impending presidential elections, everybody is looking to the presidential candidate of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and incumbent Prime Minister, Mr Mahindra Rajapakse, to spell out clearly his position on the peace process and negotiations with the LTTE.

His dilemma is that he is going to need not only the support of the Sinhala nationalist vote, for which he will have to mend fences with the hardliner JVP, which withdrew support to the Chandrika Kumaratunga Government on the issue of managing tsunami relief operations with the LTTE, but also the minority vote. If he jettisons the PTOMS agreement to please the JVP, he loses the Tamil minority vote. "And it would be extremely tragic and regressive if Mr Rajapakse were to win the presidency on a Sinhala nationlist ticket," says Mr Saravanamuttu.

Mr Jehan Perera, Media Director of the National Council for Peace, thinks it will be a close race for both the presidential candidates — Mr Rajapakse and the former UNP Prime Minister, Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe. He thinks that while neither candidate will be willing to take any "bold initiatives in accommodating the LTTE in the peace process" for fear of losing the Sinhala majority vote, each will be actively wooing the minority Tamil vote "because particularly in the presidential election the winner needs to get the minority vote in order to get the majority. So while the two parties and the two candidates will not wish to alienate the Sinhala voters, at the same time they also need to woo the minority vote. So I don't see a racist campaign emanating from the two main players unlike in the past."

Mr Perera thinks that the LTTE would be happier to get Mr Wickremesinghe as the new President. "It will probably be happy with change in the political leadership in the south because it has lost faith in the ability to progress with Mrs Chandrika Kumaratunga. She has not only taken a very hard stand against the LTTE in the past, even on the issue of PTOMS, while she did make a compromise, she was unable to deliver or take it forward. So the LTTE might prefer a change."

And let's not forget that Mr Wickremesinghe was the original architect of the present peace process and the ceasefire agreement was signed during his prime ministership, in 2002.

But Mr Rajapakse has given enough indication that he will give the campaign all he has by wooing the other minority — the Christians. Recently he stepped down as chairman of a parliamentary committee constituted to look into a Bill on unethical conversions; a Bill that is very unpopular with Christians. Both the Christians and the Muslims form 8 per cent each of the population.

As for the Muslim vote, Mr Perara feels that Mr Wickremesinghe, having "established a track record of being supportive of minority aspirations in relation to the Tamils, can hope to get Muslim support.

Though he's not shown the same sympathy to Muslims, the fact that he is willing to promote Tamil rights gives the Muslim voters the hope that sooner than later he will take up their case too. Mr Rajapakse has no such track record. But his personal choices have been very liberal; he has married a Catholic and his children go to Christian schools. Those of us who know him personally would say that he is not an aggressive Sinhala Buddhist and is quite liberal."

That brings us to the incumbent President, Mrs Chandrika Kumaratunga, who under the present Constitution, cannot fight any more presidential elections. The question on everybody's lips is: Having wielded so much political power in the past, is she prepared to give it all up?

Mrs Chandrika Kumaratunga herself has said in interviews in the past that she is looking forward to doing just that, but then nobody takes this seriously. Says Mr Perera, "The abiding suspicion is that she does not wish to go out of politics."

Political analysts in Sri Lanka rule out the possibility of Mrs Chandrika Kumaratunga taking over the remote-control — as Mrs Sonia Gandhi has in New Delhi — if Mr Rajapakse becomes the President.

"I don't see that happening; for one thing, he's a very ambitious man and certainly he's no Manmohan Singh! And the presidency is far too powerful to control; the one who gets the presidency is the head of government, head of Cabinet, head of armed forces, unchallengeable in courts of law, picks the prime minister, picks the entire cabinet. The President has lots of powers," says Mr Perera.

On which party would be beneficial to Sri Lanka's interest, particularly the economy, Mr Saravanamuttu says that from 2001-end to April 2004, the Ranil Wickremesinghe government was able to "get the ceasefire going and institute economic reforms which were very unpopular in some quarters because they required a great deal of sacrifice.

"The ideological perspective was very much the Washington consensus of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But that government did have a vision in terms of where economic development ought to be directed and where the country should head. It was very keen to get the war out of the way, and proceed with economic developments in accordance with its ideological perspective."

Even while claiming that the UNF (United National Front) government had surrendered to the LTTE, once it came to power the Chandrika government too continued the same policies; "they had no option and they saw the wisdom of those policies."

Now, of course, says Mr Saravanamuttu, "the government is in limbo and nothing is happening and everything seems to be obscured by this whole question of what is Her Excellency's political future. Will she hand over her party to another dynasty headed by Mr Rajapakse? Is she going to continue in office, can she change the Constitution, etc. So we've lost a sense of perspective; quite simply we've lost the plot."

On the Sonia Gandhi analogy, he says: "If she did that, she would very definitely cripple and undermine Mr Rajpakse's candidacy and he'll not be seen by the people as being his own man or candidate."

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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