COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Tiger rebels deliberately ditched the man who signed a truce with them and cleared the way for his hawkish rival to win the presidency in a calculated move that has dashed peace hopes, analysts said on Friday.
The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) prevented Tamils from participating in Thursday’s presidential election thereby blocking votes that many expected to hand victory to opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.
“What the Tigers have done is to ensure Mr Wickremesinghe’s defeat,” said political analyst and former air force chief Harry Gunatillake. “They may have calculated that he was the more formidable man to deal with.”
Wickremesinghe entered a ceasefire with the LTTE in 2002 and lost his job as prime minister. President Chandrika Kumaratunga sacked him, charging he had jeopardized national security by inking the truce.
Instead of delivering the minority Tamil votes to Wickremesinghe, the Tigers staged a virtual boycott and let in the hardline nationalist candidate Mahinda Rajapakse, the incumbent prime minister.
Rajapakse’s tough approach to peace appears to better suit the Tigers’ own reluctance to return to talks.
Gunatillake noted the Tigers have struggled to control a damaging split and want more time to rally their ranks.
Asked if he felt let down by the Tigers, Wickremesinghe said: “I had no deal with them to feel let down.”
Wickremesinghe, who had earned a reputation as a keen strategist and a shrewd negotiator, appeared to have been led up the garden path by the Tigers and then ditched.
“I was never expecting to win with the votes in Jaffna,” Wickremesinghe told AFP as it became clear that the Tamils were staying at home. “If you can’t win in the (Sinhalese majority) south, you can’t win the country,” he said.
Diplomats involved in Sri Lanka’s Norwegian-backed peace process had banked on Wickremesinghe winning the presidency to inject new dynamism into a moribund peace initiative.
However, his defeat was seen putting the clock back on the peace process.
The new president has vowed he will not turn the country into a federal state and is against power sharing with minority Tamils.
“What was important about Wickremesinghe’s plan was power sharing,” said Sunanda Deshapriya, director at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) think tank. “All that would be in question now.”
The Tiger move to keep away voters is exactly what Rajapakse’s camp had wanted but could not achieve even through a supreme court petition.
Fearing that a high poll among Tamils could favour the former premier, the Rajapakse camp asked the court to stop Tamils voting in rebel-held areas, a call rejected by the judiciary earlier this month.
PROMISES & CHALLENGE: Sympathizers say Mahinda Rajapakse has set himself a challenge to deliver the raft of subsidies he promised voters.
Sri Lanka is already creaking under the strain of high oil prices and double-digit inflation and his bundle of goodies estimated to cost 50 million dollars may prove more than the country can afford, they said.
Sri Lanka’s 20-billion-dollar economy is heavily dependent on foreign remittances, clothing and tea exports and tourism.
Analysts said voters from the Sinhalese majority appeared to have been swayed by the populist subsidies, grants and tax breaks offered by Mr Rajapakse.
Among the immediate priorities for Mr Rajapakse is to tackle politically-unpopular reforms in the loss-making energy sector, privatization and infrastructure.
“That should unleash a new source of growth,” said Alastair Corera, country head of Fitch Ratings Lanka.
Mr Rajapakse will also have to deal with rebuilding tsunami-battered coastlines. The country has received aid pledges worth 3.2 billion dollars for reconstruction.
He has rejected plans to share tsunami aid with Tamil Tiger rebels, opposed autonomy for minority Tamils, pledged to halt privatization of state assets and foster an inward-looking national economy.
Foreign aid pledged is more than enough to cover reconstruction costs, but much of the money has been tied by donors to progress in the island’s stalled peace process.
Colombo’s tiny stock market panicked after Mr Rajapakse’s victory, with the benchmark All Share Price Index closing 175 points, or nearly seven per cent, down.
Some investors said they were not convinced that the new president could create 2.5 million jobs and cut prices without slowing economic growth and holding up peace talks with Tamil Tigers.
“Everybody’s dumping — there are net sellers in the market today,” said Vajira Premawardhana, head of research at LOLC Securities.
“The market could fall as a knee-jerk reaction to the prime minister’s win, because of the perception that not much headway will be made on the peace front and toward progressive economic policies. But who knows, things could change,” said Mr Premawardhana.
“We still don’t know how he plans to fund a welfare state, things may change when he takes office,” said Channa Amaratunga, an economist —AFP
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