POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Peace Hopes Pinned on Polls in Jaffna

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Analysi - Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jan 27 1998 (IPS) - Local government elections in previously rebel-controlled areas this week, after 15 years, will test Sri Lankan government claims of seeking enduring peace.

The election on Jan. 29 in Jaffna and other areas wrested from separatist Tiger guerrillas two years ago will be held under tight security. The rebels have warned people against participating.

In the race are four reformed guerrilla groups who have laid down arms and the moderate Tamil United Liberation Front, vying for 234 seats in one municipality and 16 other smaller local bodies in Jaffna and some parts of the adjoining Killinochchi district.

Sri Lanka’s ruling People’s Alliance and the main opposition United National Party (UNP) are staying away — the former because it wants to give Tamil parties a chance to administer their region, while the UNP insists conditions there are not conducive for the holding of elections.

Journalists and aid workers returning from Jaffna have reported hectic campaigning, though meetings are small for fear of rebel attacks. The Tigers have not struck so far, but “their silence is ominous,” comments a Jaffna school principal.

Most analysts think polling will be peaceful, mainly because the rebels cannot risk moving fighters away from a key battle for control of a highway between Jaffna and Colombo which began seven months ago. Some 30,000 soldiers and up to 12,000 rebels are locked in combat over a 10-km stretch of road.

The rebels could use different tactics, suggests Defence analyst Harry Gunatillake. “I would expect them to threaten polling officials to stay away from booths or attack victorious candidates after the poll,” Gunatillake, a retired air force commander, said in Colombo.

In his opinion, the pervasive fear of reprisals will ensure a low voter turnout — a situation that might be exploited by President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government, he says. “In such a situation, the government may stuff the ballot boxes to show the world that large numbers voted and a normal poll was held.”

“We think there is a need for the elections because there is no functioning political leadership there. There is a void … a vacuum,” Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Professor Gamini Lakshman Peiris told reporters.

“The people in the north should be given the opportunity of self-expression. This is a reactivation of civil society,” he reiterated earlier in Colombo.

But government critics argue that with half the population of the embattled region residing outside Jaffna, and not voting, the verdict cannot be counted. The government says the election is a step in the direction of restoring civilian rule.

Some 250,000 of Jaffna’s estimated 850,000 people are still refugees, living outside the northern war zone. Some 150,000 others are living abroad, forced by the ethnic conflict that has been raging since 1983.

“It is unfair to have an election when many residents are still to come back,” a farmer interviewed in Jaffna told peace worker Jehan Perera.

According to Perera, most people he spoke to think the government is imposing an election that no body wants. “We want to see our relatives coming back; the return of displaced people; to be able to rebuild our homes and to be able to return to fields cleared of mines,” he quoted residents as saying

“Holding elections is not the priority,” concludes Perera, media director of the National Peace Council after a recent visit to Jaffna to assess the need for independent groups to monitor the poll.

He said there is no escaping the fact that the Tamil Tigers have not given the green light for the poll. Jaffna is from where the rebels had run a parallel government for many years. “Had the rebels endorsed it, it would be a different story,” he told IPS.

Most residents are expected to either stay away or “spoil their votes” by voting for more than one candidate. “This is an imposed election. This is not the answer we want,” declares a Roman Catholic priest in Jaffna.

The lack of popular enthusiasm is apparent. Even a senior bureaucrat in Jaffna, said privately, that only the government in Colombo and the candidates in the race are excited by the prospect of the poll.

“The people are quite indifferent to elections. Their main concern is how to eke out a daily living, and restore their lives to some semblance of normalcy,” the official said. “The people are frustrated by the war. They want peace more than anything else.”

The Kumaratunga government, however, is pushing through with the election because it wants a civil administration to take over the running of the island’s northern peninsula, now under military control.

The elections, the government says, is an opportunity for the people to rejoin the democratic mainstream in Sri Lanka. But the continuing war can make that an exercise in futility.