POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Kumaratunga Wins Second Term, Sworn-in

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Dec 23 1999 (IPS) - President Chandrika Kumaratunga won the presidential poll with a convincing victory, and vowed, in a no-holds-barred speech Wednesday, to crack down on Tamil separatist rebels and implement a stalled peace plan.

Speaking soon after she was sworn in for a second six-year term, Kumaratunga said, far from being weakened by the rebels’ failed assassination bid, Saturday, her resolve had been “incalculably strengthened by your (rebels) cowardice.”

“Let all those who aid and abet terror be warned, let those who by act or omission support terror be warned … the days of terror in this land are numbered, and that number is small,” she said in a tough speech, outlining her future plans.

Kumaratunga won 51.14 percent of the votes, considerably less than her 62 percent in the 1994 election. Her main rival, Ranil Wickremasinghe of the United National Party (UNP) secured 43.71 percent.

An estimated 75 percent of the country’s 11 million voters turned out to choose from among 11 candidates in Tuesday’s poll.

While it is hard to ascribe the high voter turnout to a sympathy vote for Kumaratunga, until the assassination bid, Dec. 20, the presidential race was evenly poised between the two main contenders. Voters seemed disenchanted with Kumaratunga for not keeping her promises to restore peace in the war-torn island.

An edgy ruling People’s Alliance was accused of being behind much of the election-related violence reported in the last month of campaigning. At least nine people were reported to have died.

The casualties went up sharply after the twin bomb attacks in Colombo. The president was injured — on her right eye and face – – when a suspected Tamil rebel strapped with bombs blew herself up at a ruling party rally in the Town Hall, killing 25 people.

Elsewhere, a bomb exploded at the venue of an opposition UNP rally, claiming at least nine lives. Both incidents were blamed on the Tamil Tiger rebels, who never own up responsibility.

The rebels have struck in the past at election meetings, killing Gamini Dissanayake, the UNP’s candidate in the 1994 presidential poll, and Rajiv Gandhi, former Indian prime minister who was bidding to return to power in 1991.

Kumaratunga, told her ministers and journalists gathered at the swearing-in ceremony, that she believed she was the only leader who could lead this country to peace. She promised to serve with “more passion and dedication” than she did before.

“I have suffered our nation’s sorrow in every way humanly possible; in the vicious pain of losing a father; in the soul- destroying pain of losing a husband. And now finally, I have nearly stepped over the threshold of my life into the deep abyss of the unknown darkness, only to be miraculously saved …”

Kumaratunga’s prime minister father was shot dead by a Buddhist monk in 1959. Her politician-husband was assassinated during a revolt by the leftwing JVP.

Her next move could be to quickly implement a constitutional reform package to change the system of government, which has been stuck in parliament, by dissolving the house and appointing a Constituent Assembly to pass the reforms.

Her wafer-thin majority in Parliament has prevented Kumaratunga from pushing through her peace plan which she had promised in the 1994 election. Constitutional amendments here have to be approved by two-thirds of members of Parliament.

Political commentator Jehan Perara, media director of the National Peace Council (NPC) said it was likely that the president would appoint a Constituent Assembly to push the reforms through with a simple majority.

A similar Constituent Assembly was set up in 1972 by Kumaratunga’s mother, Sirima Bandaranaike, who was the world’s first woman prime minister, to pass a new Constitution for Sri Lanka.

“She will say she has a clear mandate of over 50 percent to implement the peace package and resort to these measures. She has got the green light from the masses to implement constitutional reforms,” Perera said.

Analysts believe Wickremasinghe’s inability to muster 50 percent of the vote was partly eroded by his plan to hold peace talks with the Tamil rebels and set up an interim administration with their help.

“I think that may have caused some doubt amongst majority Sinhalese voters who felt he was handing the north and the east

to the rebels,” said a defence commentator.

The president lost the key Tamil-dominated districts of Vanni in the north and Batticaloa in the east but gained a crucial win in the former rebel-controlled northern Jaffna peninsula by a narrow margin.

“The Jaffna victory … could be seen as a vote by the people against the Tamil rebels,” said Perera.

The rebels, who have been fighting 16 years for a separate state for their minority Tamil community, had unofficially asked the country’s Tamils to vote for Wickremasinghe — a diktat residents in the war zones in the north and east rarely ignore.