BBC News (23/01) – Sri Lanka campaign enters final day
by Charles Haviland
Although the war in the north of the island is now over, the campaign in other parts of the island has become bitter, violent and personal.
The two main candidates are both closely associated with the government’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers last May.
But now President Mahinda Rajapaksa and General Sarath Fonseka have fallen out bitterly.
Groups monitoring the conduct of the campaign say there have been hundreds of violent incidents, resulting in four deaths and many more wounded. More
The Hindu (23/01) – Fonseka alleges bid to rig polls
by B. Muralidhar Reddy
Hours before the close of the official campaign for the crucial January 26 Sri Lanka Presidential election, the common opposition consensus candidate and retired Army Chief Sarath Fonseka accused the incumbent President and his chief opponent in the polls Mahinda Rajapaksa of getting ready to rig the polls.
Claiming that he was far ahead of Mr. Rajapaksa, who is seeking a second endorsement for his office two years ahead of his first tenure, the retired General asserted that he would emerge victorious in the election. “I began this campaign with no political background and today I am confident that overwhelming majority of the people are with me. We know for a fact that 90 per cent of the votes in the postal vote are in our favour”, he maintained.
The main opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party (UNP), the ultra-nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Perumana (JVP) leader, Somawansa Amarasinghe and chief of Democratic People’s Front (DPF), Mano Ganesan present on the occasion declared that they would take to streets if the Rajapaksa Government attempted to rig the election. More
Transcurrent - The Two Elections in 2010: End of History for the NE Tamils or, A Fresh Beginning?
by Jolly Somasundaram
1. The Problem – The End of History
“War does not determine who is right: it just determines who is left,” wrote Bertrand Russel. The NE Tamils (who include those from this region living elsewhere in the island), never had it so bad. Toronto and London had replaced Jaffna as the two largest population centres of the NE Tamils. For twenty years, the NE had undergone de-development, becoming the most backward part of Sri Lanka (worse than Uva) under any criterion of development- poverty, educational achievement, health, infrastructure etc.The position of first minority, in numbers, has been ceded to the Muslims. For over two decades, the NE Tamils were unable to exercise their free franchise, a position to which they had fallen, after supporting the disenfranchisement of the Plantation Tamils.
They had been helpless- except to bleat- when 300,000 of their civilians were incarcerated in foetid military prison camps in the Wanni (jokingly called humanitarian centres by the government) without even their elected representatives having access to them, not to mention the media or the UNHCR. (The army would not dared have such massive camps in the South, after the end of the two southern uprisings.) More
Independent Minds (22/01) – Can the new King of Sri Lanka bring deliverance to the Tamils
by Richard Dixon
Also appears in The UK Telegraph
From North to the South, West to the East, the skies of Sri Lanka are now filled with the empty and virtual deceptive promises of two desperate presidential candidates. While the Sri Lankan politicians are beating their drums, While the so called war heroes of the nation are busy launching mudslinging campaigns against each other, while the strategic think tanks with geopolitical interests are making last minute manoeuvres to influence the outcome of the election, while the local business leaders, industrialists and bankers are speculating the election results, Sri Lankan Tamils are still on their knees praying what they have always prayed “Deliver is from the evil one”
Their voices are suppressed. They have lost their strength to fight back the oppression. But their heart cries are obvious. “Free thousands of our loved ones who are going through hunger and torture in the notorious Sri Lankan prisons,”, “Give us back our homes and lands”, “Give us the freedom to work in our own farms and fish in our own waters”, “Stop abducting our sons and daughters” “stop abusing, torturing, raping and murdering our children”, “Stop destroying our culture”, “Give us back the freedom that we were all born with as humans on this planet”
Can the new King of Sri Lanka bring deliverance to the Tamils? If we look at the history of Sri Lanka particularly in the last sixty five years, the answer to this question will be quite obvious. More
Transcurrents (22/01) – Why I am voting for Sarath Fonseka
By Samanmalee Unanthenna
University of Colombo / University of Heidelberg
When rumours started circulating some months ago of the possibility of Sarath Fonseka being a Presidential candidate, I was horrified. As the rumours at the time linked him to the JVP, I immediately contacted a couple of my JVP friends and berated them soundly for what I believed at that time to be a disastrous decision.
My main argument was that a battle between SF and MR would leave ethnic minorities with no presidential candidate to choose between and more dangerously provide a clear signal of their increasing marginalisation from political power. The nomination of SF confirmed to me that the Sri Lankan state was unabashedly and arrogantly strengthening itself as a Sinhala state.
SF had not won my respect as a military commander. While I had always been a critique of the totalitarian and despotic nature of the LTTE, I did not believe that a brutal state military response that appeared to have little regard for civilians and was brutal towards dissenters was any better. More
