POLITICS-SRI LANKA: President’s Re-election Bid in Some Trouble

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Nov 11 1999 (IPS) - Last week’s battle-field losses, the death of a key ally and the recent crossing over to her side of a group of opposition dissidents may end up costing Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga her job, according to analysts.

“The clock has turned. She is no more the frontrunner (in presidential polls on Dec. 21) and it is difficult to predict who will win,” noted Lalith Allahakoon, a senior newspaper editor. “As of now the opposition seems to be gaining some ground.”

A month ago in popularity ratings, Kumaratunga — in spite of daunting domestic problems, the unending civil war being the most serious — was way ahead of the United National Party (UNP) leader Ranil Wickremasinghe, her main challenger.

But a week of unexpected events, starting Oct. 30 with the death of government minister Saumyamoorthy Thondaman, have reversed her fortunes. Now there is even talk of Kumaratunga’s postponing the mid-term elections, which she has called one year before the completion of her six-year term.

“… She has lost a lot of ground with the military setback in the north. The military situation is very serious and there is speculation that the government may postpone elections …,” said Jehan Perera, media director of the National Peace Council.

The Sri Lankan military lost “four to five towns” and some 1,000 soldiers during a massive rebel offensive last week to retake a large chunk of territory it had lost to the military last year.

Blaming the debacle on the government, the opposition demanded that Kumaratunga take responsibility and resign from her post of defence minister.

A defensive president issued a statement saying 101 soldiers had died in action between Nov. 2 and 7, and only conceded that “some towns” had fallen to the rebels.

The military setback was the worst since 1990, according to defence observers who said that in some cases troops pulled back from camps without a fight.

Last Sunday, the government tightened restrictions on the media coverage of the war, taking the independent media by surprise, and further alienating them from Kumaratunga.

The press have called it a reimposition of censorship, since the ban on the domestic press had been relaxed for some time.

On Wednesday, the Defence Ministry sought to calm critics by saying that the censorship was not a new regulation on the media and the gazette notification was just a repeat of the June 1998 restrictions.

The director of information who doubles as the government censor, has resumed vetting local newspapers and the electronic media, censoring all news from the war front.

Analyst Harry Gunatillake, a retired air force commander, says things don’t look too well for Kumaratunga. She won’t win on the first count at the poll, he said. “That is certain to happen. The winner of the second count is anybody’s guess.”

To be re-elected president, Kumaratunga must secure 51 percent of votes or a second count would be taken. Victory by a simple majority can only be a last resort, according to election laws.

Until last month, political observers were sure the president would mop up to 50 percent of the vote in the first count.

The first alarm bells began ringing with the death of Thondaman, leader of the Ceylon Worker’s Congress (CWC) which represents the more than 500,000 plantation workers of Indian origin, for whom he had secured citizenship rights.

Though Thondaman’s successor and grandson, Arumugam has promised support to the president, he cannot claim to control the plantation vote-bank. Cracks have already appeared in the CWC.

More trouble could be brewing for Kumaratunga over her party’s decision to accept support from a break-away group of opposition UNP members led by parliamentarian Sarath Amunugama.

Last Friday’s defection was expected to pay rich dividends for Kumaratunga’s campaign but it could boomerang with newspapers accusing the government of consorting with opposition party members it had accused of “violence, racism and corruption”.

“It is ironic that amongst those who crossed over, and were hugged by government members (in a televised event), were those who were accused of violence, racism and corruption and even prosecuted for such by the government,” observed analyst Perera.

In the group are two former ministers, Wijepala Mendis who was found guilty of land grabbing by a presidential commission appointed by Kumaratunga and Nanda Mathew who played a leading role in the brutal suppression of a left-wing insurgency between 1988 and 1990. Mendis was later cleared by the Supreme Court.

Kumaratunga had called fresh elections in the hope of improving her party’s wafer-thin majority of one in parliament. The president said she wanted a bigger mandate to implement her peace package and end the war with Tamil Tiger rebels.

The war which broke out in 1983 is bleeding the country. The Tigers want a separate homeland called ‘Eelam’, in the north and east, for the island’s 2.5 million minority Tamils.

A constitutional reforms package which seeks to restore peace by giving Tamils more administrative powers in the north, is stuck in parliament for want of a two-thirds majority, as the UNP rejected the package.

The president is also under attack for failing to rein in the rising cases of bribery and corruption. A special government commission set up to tackle this issue is yet to start work because of administrative problems.

In the past few years, Sri Lanka has seen a spurt in social problems, particularly crimes against women and children, because the police are bogged down in war duties — as back-up for government troops battling Tamil rebels.

There has also been an economic slow-down due to factors like lower exports and an overall fall in tea earnings. The ripple effects of the East Asian crisis have now begun to show up in Sri Lanka.