Dirt files open on eve of Sri Lanka election
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Colombo on August 13, 2015. Source: AFPAmanda Hodge-South Asia Correspondent-AUGUST 14, 2015
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday predicted a “comfortable majority” for his United National Front in Monday’s crucial parliamentary elections.
The confident call came as his once all-powerful rival Mahinda Rajapaksa faced allegations he paid millions of dollars to Tamil Tiger commanders to enforce a boycott of the 2005 polls.
Just seven months after Mr Rajapaksa’s shock defeat in January presidential elections by his former health minister Maithripala Sirisena, he is contesting the parliamentary polls with an eye on the prime ministership.
With his legacy now marred by serious corruption allegations, the former president has been forced to campaign on his credentials as the leader who ended the three-decade long civil war.
His Sri Lankan Freedom Party has also been peddling warnings that the vanquished Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam could renew its violent insurgency, although the message has been gaining little traction with a population focused on economic reform six years after the war’s end.
In Colombo yesterday, Mr Wickremsinghe said his alliance would “preserve the gains of the January revolution” to ensure the interests of all would be served and not just those of one family.
“Our plan is to make a new country, a disciplined country where everyone is equal, where everyone has a job, where equal opportunity is given to all,” he said. “It is a country where people can speak freely and a country where natural resources will be protected. It’s a country where everybody can practise their own religion, a country where women can walk freely.
“Instead of protecting one particular family, we want a country where all families are protected. And we want to make this country in the next 60 months.”
The Prime Minister left it to his coalition allies to make more pointed allegations against his rival, with Rajapaksa government fisheries minister Rajitha Senaratne repeating claims the family paid up to $1.7 million in bribes to LTTE leaders to enforce a Tamil boycott of the 2005 election.
Mr Rajapaksa went on to narrowly win that election against Mr Wickremsinghe and remained in power for the next decade, installing family members in key positions across government and the bureaucracy.
The latest accusations have been circulating for years and featured in several US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks.
These elections are already being hailed as the cleanest in decades of murky, often thuggish Sri Lankan politics with electoral commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya enforcing polling rules that have been more notable by their absence than application in recent memory.
Gone are the towering cut-outs of politicians, the plastered political posters and the co-opting of public servants and security forces in campaigns.
Election monitors estimate there have been at least three dozen notable incidents of campaign violence, less than half the number of the 2010 election.
Though analysts are tipping at least a narrow victory for the UNF, the International Crisis Group warned yesterday that Mr Rajapaksa’s leadership of a large ethnic Sinhala nationalist bloc in parliament could still stymie the leadership’s reform and reconciliation agenda.
In a pre-election report, the ICG praised Mr Sirisena and Mr Wickremesinghe for fulfilling key reform promises in the first six months of office, including reducing the powers of the president and launching scores of investigations into alleged corruption while noting “the lack of indictments thus far has fed rumours of backroom deals”.
“The August 17 parliamentary elections will test the continued appeal of the former president’s hard-line Sinhala nationalism and provide a chance for the fresh start needed for a lasting solution to the country’s social divisions.”
