Sri Lankan columnist and cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda has been missing for almost five years. Credit: Vikalpa | Groundviews | CPA/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanya D'Almeida
COLOMBO, Jan 13 2015 (IPS)

Scenes from the brutal shooting of 12 journalists with the French satirical weekly ‘Charlie Hebdo’ have monopolised headlines worldwide ever since two men opened fire in the magazine’s Paris office on Jan. 7.

Millions have marched in the streets against what is widely being billed as an attack on free speech, and the work of the magazine’s cartoonists has gone viral.

Several thousands miles away, in Sri Lanka, a different attack on press freedom has not received even a fraction of the attention. Perhaps because, in this particular tragedy, the leading character was not killed. He simply vanished without a trace.

“One sure way to reverse the dangerous trajectory Sri Lanka has been going down during the past decade is to seriously address the pleas of those like Sandhya Eknaligoda, whose husband Prageeth remains missing five years on [...]." -- Sumit Galhotra, Asia Researcher for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
The last time anyone heard from Prageeth Eknaligoda was on Jan. 24, 2010. Just after 10 p.m. he called to inform his wife, Sandhya, that he was on his way home from the office. He never arrived.

From local police stations all the way to the United Nations in Geneva, she has searched for answers as to his whereabouts, but found none.

Rights groups like Amnesty International believe the authorities played a role in his disappearance, while neighbours report seeing an unmarked white van parked outside his house the day he went missing – a vehicle widely associated with enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka.

A cartoonist and columnist for Lanka eNews (LEN), Eknaligoda had long used his pen to draw attention to corruption, human rights abuses and eroding democracy in Sri Lanka.

One of his most widely shared images depicts the back of a half-naked woman facing a gang of laughing men. Scratched on the wall behind her are the words “Preference of the majority is democracy”, which some commentators claimed was a reference to the powerlessness of minorities in a largely Sinhala-Buddhist country.

He also turned his sharp pen to the issue of education, sketching out in glaring detail the impact of a weak school system on the youth, including one cartoon that depicted the tragic suicide of a student at a leading girls’ school in the capital, Colombo.

In a country that is ranked fourth – between the Philippines and Syria – on the Impunity Index compiled by the leading media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), it was perhaps only a matter of time before Eknaligoda was forced to answer to the powers that be.

But because there is no evidence to show he suffered the same fate as the 19 Sri Lankan journalists who have been killed in cold blood since 1992, Eknaligoda is not included among those who paid with their lives for their writings.

Because his body was never found, there is no gravesite around which to gather to mourn his death. In fact, former Attorney General Mohan Peiris told a United Nations Committee against Torture in 2011 that Eknaligoda was still alive and living in a foreign country – a statement he later retracted.

As far as the family is concerned, disappearance is a fate worse than death. In an interview with IPS in 2012, Sandhya Eknaligoda explained, “Not knowing where your loved one is, that is mental torture. And it is worse than physical torture, where at least the world can see the marks of your suffering.”

New government, new hopes

On Jan. 7, as news of the Charlie Hebdo massacre reached heads of state around the world, Sri Lanka’s then-president Rajapaksa was among those to immediately offer condolences to the victims’ families.

Those who have closely followed Eknaligoda’s case called the statement hypocritical, given the government’s alleged indifference to a free press in Sri Lanka.

So when Rajapaksa was ousted at the Jan. 8 presidential election, replaced by his former party secretary Maithripala Sirisena, experts and activists began, tentatively, to hope for accountability.

“Maithripala Sirisena’s stunning win marks an opportunity for Sri Lanka to improve the climate for press freedom,” Sumit Galhotra, Asia researcher for CPJ, told IPS. “While he has pledged to eradicate corruption and ensure greater transparency, we will be watching closely to see if he follows these verbal commitments with concrete steps.

“One sure way to reverse the dangerous trajectory Sri Lanka has been going down during the past decade is to seriously address the pleas of those like Sandhya Eknaligoda, whose husband Prageeth remains missing five years on and to begin combating the culture of impunity that has flourished in the country when it comes to anti-press violence,” he added.

Among a long list of atrocities that the journalistic community has suffered was the assassination of Lasantha Wickrematunge in broad daylight on Jan. 8, 2009. Founder-editor of the major English-language weekly, the Sunday Leader, Wickrematunge was an outspoken critic of all forms of abuse of power and human rights violations.

Addressing a crowd of some 50 people who gathered at his gravesite on the morning of the presidential poll exactly six years after Lasantha’s death, his brother Lal Wickrematunge called attention to the failure of the “numerous squads assigned to handle investigations into the murder [to make] any headway.”

Now, as the new government assumes office, activists say there will be a renewed push for justice.

It is still early days, but already there have been some positive steps.

“Some of the websites that were blocked like TamilNet and Lanka eNews are accessible now, and these are good signs,” Ruki Fernando, a prominent grassroots activist here, told IPS.

“But there are a number of cases, like Prageeth’s, Lasantha’s and many, many others – including numerous cases against the [Jaffna-based Tamil language daily newspaper] Uthayan – that need to be expedited.

“That doesn’t mean that Lal [Wickrematunge] or Sandhya [Eknaligoda] are asking for political favours,” he asserted. “All they’re asking is that the normal course of justice, which was been obstructed so far, be allowed to proceed in an independent manner without political interference.

“These are things we expect from the new regime in its first 100 days,” Fernando stated. “Until they are implemented, I don’t have much confidence – I only have hope.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Fed up with poverty, unemployment and broken promises on a political settlement, Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province voted overwhelmingly in support of opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena at the Jan. 9 presidential elections. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
COLOMBO, Jan 9 2015 (IPS)

When the initial results started trickling in a little after midnight on Jan. 9, it still wasn’t clear exactly which way the country would swing: had Sri Lanka’s 15 million eligible voters thrown in their lot with incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa for a third term? Or would the desire for change put common opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena at the helm?

It seemed close at first, with the bulk of the Sinhalase masses in the southern and central districts of Hambantota and Ratnapura polling in favour of Rajapaksa and his United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA).

But when newscasters began reading out the final tally of votes from the Tamil and Muslim-majority Northern and Eastern Provinces, it became clear that this was no repeat of the 2010 presidential race.

“This year the Tamil people seemed to have taken an oath for change." -- Dr. Jeyasingham, a senior lecturer at the Eastern University of Sri Lanka in Batticaloa
Symbolised by a swan, the ‘rainbow coalition’ National Democratic Front (NDF) swept the 12 electoral divisions in the northern Jaffna district with 253,574 votes, roughly 74.42 percent of the largely Tamil electorate.

The Tamil-majority northern Vanni district saw a landslide win for the NDF, with majority votes in the Mannar, Mullaitivu and Vavuniya polling divisions bringing in 78.47 percent of that region’s total ballots, while the eastern Batticaloa district also voted overwhelmingly in favour of the opposition, bringing Sirisena 81.62 percent of the total.

By six a.m., as daylight crept over the island, longtime President Rajapaksa had accepted defeat, and the new leader was making plans for a swearing-in ceremony at the Independence Square in Colombo.

Despite both candidates hailing from rural Sinhala communities and campaigning largely on a platform of promises to the Sinhala masses, experts say it was the minorities who decided this election.

“This year the Tamil people seemed to have taken an oath for change,” said Dr. Jeyasingham, a senior lecturer at the Eastern University of Sri Lanka in Batticaloa. “People in the North and East voted early – always a sign that change is in the air.

“Today, one thing is clear,” he told IPS, “and that is: minority votes decided this president. Tamils and Muslims [who account for 15 and nine percent of the population, respectively] are an important part of this democratic system and they had enough grievances to vote against the existing government.”

Silent discontent

Few could predict with certainty the outcome of the polls.

Since coming to power in 2005, Rajapaksa has enjoyed widespread popular support, bolstered by his decisive defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, which brought an end to Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long civil conflict.

Riding on the war victory, Rajapaksa proceeded to consolidate his position by appointing his flesh and blood to prominent political posts. His three brothers serve, respectively, as the minister of economic development, the defence secretary and the speaker of parliament.

He also embarked on ambitious infrastructure projects, including the construction of major highways and reconstruction of the rail-line linking southern Sri Lanka with the north.

Still, experts say he neglected crucial issues, including delivering on promises to the minority Tamil population to allow them greater political autonomy, initiating a meaningful reconciliation process in the aftermath of the bloody conflict, and ensuring the independence of democratic institutions such as parliament and the judiciary.

Faced with a surprise challenger in the form of his one-time health minister and party secretary Sirisena, Rajapaksa fell back on his post-war rhetoric, ‘defeating terrorism’ in Sri Lanka being the regime’s greatest claim to fame.

Unfortunately for him, the public did not bite. Ironically, the lack of efforts to reconcile with the people of the north and east – who bore the brunt of the final stages of the war for which both the government and the LTTE stand accused of war crimes – proved to be the nail in his coffin.

“The last government failed with respect to any kind of meaningful reconciliation,” Dr. Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), told IPS.

“They engaged in land grabs [in the North], got the army involved in the economy, from buying and selling vegetables to running hotels, [and] engaged in human rights violations, in which they were getting away with impunity.”

Voting for change

Grassroots activists on the ground in the North and East have long called attention to wounds left untreated for too long. Many thousands still live with trauma, while others say there was never formal recognition of civilians’ suffering in a battle that claimed between 8,000 and 40,000 lives.

“[People in the North] were not even allowed to mourn their kith and kin,” Jeyasingham asserted. “Burial grounds were demolished. These are all things people have been keeping inside but they couldn’t raise their voices because of state oppression.”

And while press releases boasted of rapid rehabilitation and development in the former war zone, the majority of residents here struggled to find three square meals a day. Unemployment in the Northern Province stands at 5.2 percent, with the Kilinochchi District boasting the highest unemployment rate in the island, at 7.9 percent.

Poverty is also widespread, with government data pointing to a 28.8-percent poverty headcount in the Mullaitivu District, six times the national rate of 6.7 percent. In Mannar, the poverty rate is 20.1 percent, while Jaffna and Kilinochchi each nurse poverty headcounts of 8.3 percent and 12.7 percent, respectively.

“Even government servants struggle to survive on a 30-day basic salary,” Jeyasingham said. “This was clear from the postal votes in the North – it appears almost all public servants had voted against the government.”

Seen against this backdrop, many felt that Rajapaksa’s pre-election appeal to Tamil voters in the North to choose “the known devil” over the “unknown angel” to be in poor taste.

In Muslim-majority areas, too, it was plain where minorities stood.

A spate of violent attacks against Muslim communities in the last year – including a deadly riot in the southern town of Aluthgama that left eight people dead, 80 injured, and several shops in smoldering ruins after being torched by Sinhalese mobs – had many fearing for the future of religious and ethnic plurality in the country.

Public sentiment soured further at what many perceived to be indifference on the part of the government to attacks on Muslim shops and businesses, while tolerance towards the hard-line Buddhist monk-led Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Task Force, or BBS), widely believed to be instigators of the inter-religious tensions, pushed many Muslim communities away from the Rajapaksa regime.

It is yet to be seen how the new president will do justice to the huge voter turnout in the North and East. Sirisena’s 100-day work programme promises equality and an end to religious intolerance, Saravanamuttu said, but some political observers fear he may renege on these pledges in favour of placating the Sinhala vote-base.

As for the minorities, they have put their shoulders to the wheel of democracy and forced open the space to air their grievances. They can only hope they will be heard.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Violence in the lead-up to the Jan. 8 presidential election in Sri Lanka has poll monitors on edge. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Jan 6 2015 (IPS)

As 14.5 million Sri Lankans prepare to select their next leader, there is growing fear that violence could mar the Jan. 8 elections, billed as the closest electoral contest in the island’s history.

Election monitors were worried that as incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his rival Maithripala Sirisena wound down their campaigns on Jan. 5, violence would scare off voters.

Keerthi Tennakoon, executive director of the national election monitoring body Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), observed that a worrying precedent has been set by police who have by and large remained inactive against violations of election laws, especially those perpetrated by government supporters including at least two parliamentarians.

“The last 48 hours before the election are crucial; ordinary voters will not want to risk being assaulted, or worse, if they feel that there is such a risk." -- Keerthi Tennakoon, executive director of the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE)
“The police always appear to be late on the uptake when decisive action by law enforcement can be the most effective deterrent [to violence],” he told IPS.

He pointed to recent clashes in Kahawatta, a town in the central Ratnapura District, as an example. In the early hours of the morning on Jan. 5, while a group of opposition supporters were busy setting up the stage for a rally by common opposition candidate Sirisena in the town’s public grounds, a band of government supporters arrived in eight vehicles and began attacking them.

Rather than running away, the opposition group retaliated. The situation escalated, and shots were fired. Three opposition supporters were injured, and one was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

Enraged, the opposition supporters launched a retaliatory attack on election offices set up by government followers. The main roads of the town were blocked for at least four hours while the mayhem unfolded.

“Police [did not] take any action until two hours after the initial incident,” CaFFE noted in an update. “They only reacted when the [opposition] United National Party (UNP) supporters started attacking [Deputy Minister Premalal] Jayasekara’s offices,” the monitoring body added.

A couple of hours earlier, another group of government supporters loyal to a deputy minister assaulted officials from the election commissioner’s department in the eastern town of Trincomalee after they had gone to investigate a digital screen in a public space relaying election propaganda.

The attack took place despite the officials being provided security by nine policemen.

“The last 48 hours before the election are crucial; ordinary voters will not want to risk being assaulted, or worse, if they feel that there is such a risk,” Tennakoon said.

Voting for equality?

The elections have been billed as one of closet in recent history. President Rajapaksa, who called elections two years before they were due, is facing a stiff challenge in the form of his one-time health minister Sirisena.

The run-up to the election has been dominated by personal attacks against the top contenders, and has remained largely empty of policy discussions.

Despite robust growth, Sri Lanka still faces vast economic disparities. The richest 20 percent of the population enjoys half of all national income, while the poorest 20 percent has access to just five percent of the country’s wealth.

According to the latest Household Income Survey by the government’s Department of Census and Statistics, the monthly income of the poorest 20 percent of the population was 10, 245 rupees (about 78 dollars), while the richest 20 percent earned a monthly income of 121,368 rupees (about 933 dollars).

Furthermore, the war-ravaged North is mired in poverty despite the civil war ending in May 2009.

Anushka Wijesinha, an economist and policy advisor, observed that the election manifestos are full of promises relating to public spending and low on strategic policies that would ensure long-term stability.

“Unsurprisingly, both manifestos are populist and full of public spending goodies – from welfare handouts to public sector salary hikes. These will boost short-term consumption, and are unlikely to be inflationary as recent inflation has been low. But the spending will hurt the fiscal consolidation efforts of the past few years and public finances may come under increased pressure,” he said.

The elections are likely to create economic uncertainty at least in the short term and will in all likelihood be followed by parliamentary elections. A day after elections were announced on Nov. 20, the Colombo Stock Market recorded its worst slide in over 15 months, and has remained sluggish ever since.

“Both [leading candidates] have a heavy emphasis on state-led initiatives and taxpayer-funded programmes, which in the past have been notoriously inefficient. Instead, focus of policies should be on making it easier for private sector entrepreneurship and innovation to thrive,” Wijesinha asserted.

The election has also seen a crumbling of the broad-based support President Rajapaksa enjoyed in Sri Lanka’s parliament since the war’s end.

Since late 2010, the President has had a two-thirds majority in the 225-member parliament. But a little over a month after elections were called on Nov. 20, 26 members from the government’s camp have crossed over to the opposition.

The Sirisena campaign has also gained the support of parties representing Muslim and Tamil minorities, who together comprise some 15 percent of the country’s population of 21 million.

There has been some attention paid to issues of importance to the minorities, especially development in the Northern Province.

President Rajapaksa campaigned in the North twice and pledged to revitalise the economy and create jobs.

Still, the unemployment rate in the Northern Province is stubbornly high at 5.2 percent, well above the national rate of 4.4 percent and the third highest in the country.

The island’s highest unemployment rate of 7.9 percent was recorded in the Kilinochchi District last year, according to government statistics. Poverty is also rampant in the North, with four of the five districts that make up the province registering rates higher than the national poverty rate of 6.7 percent.

But Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, who heads the Point Pedro Institute of Development based in northern Jaffna, told IPS that if the Northern economy is to regain momentum, more private investment needed to be channeled in.

“I would argue that more private capital investment that could generate a large number of [jobs] is the critical need, rather than foreign aid,” he said, pointing out that policies needed to be formulated with long-term stability in mind.

He also feels that decentralising power could help address political as well as economic grievances. “Fiscal devolution to the provinces should be undertaken immediately to provide the necessary financial resources for the provinces (including the Eastern and Northern Provinces) to operate independently and effectively without interference from the national government,” he stated.

Power devolution has been a critical demand of minority Tamil groups throughout the island’s post-independence history. In fact, the lack of political power was a major catalyst for the growth of separatism and the rise of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which waged a protracted battle for an independent ‘homeland’ for the Tamil people from 1983 until 2009.

However, Ponnadurai Balasundarampillai, former Vice Chancellor of the Jaffna University, told IPS that power devolution would be a tricky subject for any administration.

“If it is a new president, he will have to take stock of the situation. The incumbent presidency has already shown that it favours a more centralised form of governance and administration,” he said.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

An election poster for incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa stands next to a tsunami memorial in Sri Lanka's southern town of Peraliya. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Jan 5 2015 (IPS)

These days, the national greeting in Sri Lanka is a simple question: “So, what do you think?”

Everyone from van drivers waiting to pick kids up from school, to mechanics repairing vehicles, to barbers cutting your hair have only this question on their lips.

Even government ministers, though appearing assured of their victory at the upcoming Jan. 8 presidential polls while addressing crowds of supporters on stage, ask this query of journalists during interviews. Businesses are carrying out mock polls to determine the outcome. A Twitter hashtag conceived for the election receives updates by the second.

“In a tight election, if voters stay away, that could be decisive." -- Keerthi Tennakoon, head of the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE)
The last time a single topic occupied the entire nation’s mind was last April, as the Sri Lankan cricket team steadily progressed through the World T20 Championships. This time, the issue up for debate has far greater consequences; it will determine the future of this country of 21 million people for the next six years.

The election is living up to the bill that it will be keenly contested. Election monitors who travel around the country speak of generally reticent voters openly discussing how their choice could be decisive this year.

There are some 14.5 million registered voters in Sri Lanka and at least 70 percent will cast their ballots, according to monitors, if the situation remains clam.

But like the T20 Cricket Championship, elections too offer only one chance for victory, leaving little room for missteps or lost momentum.

When the incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa called for snap elections on Nov. 20, two years before they were due, the expectations within his governing coalition, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), was that long-standing opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe would step up to the plate.

What was expected to be a re-run of the 2005 elections won easily by Rajapaksa has turned into a full throttle dash to the finish, with the general secretary of Rajapaksa’s own party and his Minister of Health Maithripala Sirisena quitting the government and entering the fray as the common candidate for the opposition.

Since that defection it has been politics, Sri Lankan-style, at its worst and best. Campaigning has stooped to the lowest levels of mud slinging, while parliamentarians have switched sides en masse, mainly from the government’s ranks.

Formerly reticent voters in Sri Lanka are talking openly about their choice at the upcoming presidential polls. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Rajapaksa gained two opposition members including the general secretary of the main opposition United National Party (UNP), while Sirisena has been endorsed by at least 26 MPs formerly with the government.

For the first time in the last five years, the word ‘underdog’ was used to refer to President Rajapaksa, when the widely read Sunday Times newspaper carried the headline, “Rajapaksa goes in as underdog, but is no pushover”, on the last weekend before the polls.

A month ago, such a comparison would have been unheard of in Sri Lanka, where the governing coalition has enjoyed an unprecedented degree of control over social, economic and political life since defeating the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 and bringing an end to nearly three decades of civil war.

But Sirisena has campaigned hard and more than lived up to the prediction that he will test the popularity of the Rajapaksa regime.

As the election campaign enters its final 72 hours, there is growing fear among monitors that violence will escalate.

In the last two days, two rallies addressed by Sirisena – one in Pelmadulla in the Ratnapura District of the southwestern Sabaragamuwa Province, and the other in Aralaganwila in his native Polonnaruwa District in the North Central Province – have come under attack, with shots being fired at the latter rally according to reports on social media.

In the early hours of Jan. 5, the last day of campaigning, the streets of the town of Kahawatte, close to the Rathapura District, were turned into a battle-zone as opposition supporters took on a group of government loyalists who had arrived in eight vehicles.

The pro-government group allegedly started the fracas by attacking opposition members erecting a stage for a rally slated to begin later on Monday.

Three opposition supporters were injured, one critically due to gun shot wounds, and several party offices supporting Rajapaksa were set on fire.

Since the start of the campaign election monitors have complained of police inaction. In the Kahawatte incident they said that police had only intervened when opposition supporters began attacking government election offices after they were fired at.

Keerthi Tennakoon, who heads the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), says there has been disturbing information that systematic violence could be unleashed in selected polling areas.

“In a tight election, if voters stay away, that could be decisive,” he warned.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Sri Lanka is gripped by election fever, but the impoverished majority fears that the presidential race will not ease their financial hardships. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Nov 28 2014 (IPS)

Priyantha Wakvitta is used to seeing his adopted city, Colombo, transform into a landscape of bright sparkling lights and window dressing towards the end of the year.

This year, he says, he is having a double dose of visual stimulation, with publicity materials for the January Presidential Election competing with Christmas décor at every turn.

Though the presidential race could shape up to be a close one, there is no competition over which event will take Colombo by storm: political propaganda is drowning out the festive mood on every street corner.

“[Politicians] are spending millions just to get their faces all over the city, while I am struggling to keep my family fed and my children in school." -- Priyantha Wakvitta, a 50-year-old bread seller in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo
Four days after the elections were announced on Nov. 21, at least 1,800 cutouts of the incumbent president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, had been deployed within the limits of the Colombo Municipality, according to national election monitors with the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE).

Head of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), Rajapaksa has enjoyed massive support around the country for his role in decimating the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, thus bringing an end to nearly three decades of civil war in 2009.

But as the post-war years revealed themselves as a time of hardship of a very different nature – economic rather than political – his popularity has waned.

His main challenger in the presidential race, Maithripala Sirisena, was until recently the general secretary of Rajapaksa’s own political party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).

Last week Sirisena stepped out of government and into the role of Rajapaksa’s contender as the common opposition candidate.

The election is turning out to be a keen contest; already there have been eight defections from the ruling coalition’s United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), while the powerful nationalist party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya, once the government’s staunch ally, has declared its opposition to the Rajapaksas.

The poster campaign around the capital city and throughout the country is a bid to win hearts and minds, but the beaming cutouts of politicians have left people like Wakvitta at best annoyed, at worst disgusted.

“They are spending millions just to get their faces all over the city, while I am struggling to keep my family fed and my children in school,” said the 50-year-old father of two, originally from the southern district of Galle, but self employed in the capital for the last decade.

Wakvitta is an enterprising man. He runs his own small bakery in a Colombo suburb and makes a living by distributing bread to households. He used to make a profit of around 30,000 rupees, or roughly 250 dollars, a month. But that figure has been going down steadily over the last year.

He tried to branch out to a small vegetable business earlier this year, but burnt his hands and lost his 100,000-rupee investment, the equivalent of about 700 dollars, no small sum in a country where the average annual income is about 550,000 rupees or 4,100 dollars.

“People don’t have money, they are finding it hard to make ends meet,” Wakvitta said.

Though Sri Lanka has maintained an impressive economic growth rate of 7.5 percent and the Rajapaksa government has a string of high-profile infrastructure projects under its belt, including a new seaport and airport, low-income earners say they are struggling to survive.

The national poverty rate is 6.7 percent but most rural areas report higher figures. In Wakvitta’s native Galle District it is 9.9 percent, in the south-central district of Moneragala it is 20.8 percent and in Rathnapura, capital of the southwestern Sabaragamuwa Province, it is 10.4 percent, according to government data.

The problems the poor face are multi-faceted; while wages have remained static, basic commodities have quietly increased in price. Most significant among them has been the upward trend in the cost of rice, a dietary staple here.

Fueled by an 11-month drought that has caused a loss of almost a third of the planted area, the 2014 rice harvest is expected to be at least 20 percent less than last year’s four million metric tons, and a six-year low.

Rice prices have risen 33 percent according to the World Food Programme (WFP), and vegetable and fish prices have also shown periodic upward movement primarily due to inclement weather.

Token gestures or sound economic policies?

Cognizant of the hardships faced by the Sri Lankan masses, political parties across the spectrum frequently use the election run-up to promise the earth to the average voter – from subsidies to assistance packages – pledging to make life easier for those who form the majority of the electorate.

But Ajith Dissanayake, who is from the southern Galle District and makes a living from paddy cultivation, says that token gestures will not do.

“Election handouts will not work, there needs to be some kind of concerted plan to help the poor,” he told IPS.

In the northern regions of the country, where the population is still trying to shake off the residual nightmare of nearly 30 years of civil war, the situation is even worse.

The conflict ended in May 2009, and since then the government has injected over three billion dollars into the reconstruction effort in the Northern Province, largely for major infrastructure projects.

But the region is mired in abject poverty. The Mullaithivu District, which witnessed the last bloody battles in the protracted conflict between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE over five years ago, is the poorest in the nation, with a poverty ratio of 28.3 percent.

The adjoining Kilinochchi District has a recorded poverty headcount of 12.7 percent.

“It is very difficult, it is like we are fighting another conflict: this time with poverty,” said Thiyagarasa Chandirakumar, a 38-year-old disabled father of two from Oddusuddan, a small village located deep inside Mullaithivu.

He told IPS that despite new electrification programmes, many in his village are still waiting for the supply to light up their homes.

“Most of us don’t have the money to get new connections, we don’t even have money sometimes to take a bus,” explained Chandirakumar, who is confined to a wheelchair due to a wartime injury.

Both Wakvitta and Chandirakumar have simple requests from the candidates standing for the highest office in the country: “Make sure our lives are better off than they were before,” Wakvitta said.

That request, however, is unlikely to be realised any time soon. News of the snap election, coupled with the surprise announcement this past week of a common opposition candidate, has thrown the country into a period of uncertainly, at least in the short term.

Two days after elections were announced, the Colombo Stock Market took a nose-dive, with the All Share Price Index falling by 2.3 percent on Monday, Nov. 24 – the worst slide since August 2013.

Analysts say that investors are likely to hold off for the time being, with long-term policy measures also taking a back seat to what promises to be a fierce contest.

“Investors – whether local or foreign – like certainty,” Anushka Wijesinha, an economist with the national think-tank the Institute for Policy Studies, told IPS.

“Policy and political certainty have been established fairly well over the last few years and any disruption to this would no doubt be viewed negatively by investors. So, the recent political developments will be watched closely,” he added.

Wijesinha also said that elections should be more about long term policies than about handouts aimed at wining votes.

“This calls for a shift from the heavy focus on subsidies, welfare payments, and other generous transfers for rural populations – which may help alleviate poverty in the short term – to improving skills, productivity and access to new economic opportunities, which help raise living standards on a more sustained basis,” he said.

Despite the end of the war ushering in renewed hopes of development, income disparities have stubbornly persisted. According to government data, the country’s richest 20 percent still enjoy close to half of the nation’s income, while the poorest 20 percent only share five percent of national wealth among them.

For those like Wakvitta and Chandirakumar, the future looks bleak, with or without elections. Both know for sure that in the short term nothing much will change for the better.

“Hopefully whoever becomes the next president will take the bold steps needed to help people like me,” Wakvitta said as he sped away on his motorbike, looking for his next customer.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Muslim women were the first to venture back to their homes following deadly riots in southwest Sri Lanka on Jun. 15, 2014. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO/ALUTHGAMA, Jun 19 2014 (IPS)

The signs had been clear for months; beneath the veneer of normalcy in Sri Lanka’s southwestern coastal town of Aluthgama, religious tensions were brewing, but no one was sure how or when they would erupt.

A little over a month ago the cauldron simmered over when a mob attacked a Muslim-owned shop in this town, 60 km south of the capital Colombo, after the owner’s brother was arrested for sexually molesting a minor from the majority Sinhala community.

Barely a month later, on Jun. 12, hostilities flared again when crowds of angry people surrounded the local police station following an altercation involving a Buddhist monk and some Muslim residents.

When officials in Colombo and Aluthgama heard that the hard-line group Bodu Bala Sena – loosely translated as Buddhist Force and referred to simply as the BBS – was planning a meeting on Jun. 15 in Aluthgama, they sounded the alarm.

“When you see your house burnt down, your life destroyed in flames, it is very difficult to regain the trust in those you expect to protect you." -- Iqbal Asgar, a Muslim resident of Dharga Town
Faiszer Musthapha, a deputy minister in the government of the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), urged the inspector general of police to increase security in the area for fear the rally could turn sour.

According to a letter penned by the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama, the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, the Wakf Board of Sri Lanka, the All Ceylon YMMA and the Colombo Masjid Federation, “This is a dangerous situation that could develop into a major riot.”

The warning fell on deaf ears.

On Jun. 15, the meeting went ahead as planned and shortly thereafter, trouble began in the nearby Muslim enclave of Dharga Town. Some of the participants in the BBS rally traveled through the town in a convoy and the first clashes erupted near the town’s mosque where local residents had gathered.

By dusk the police had declared a curfew, but by then the rampaging mob could not be contained. Sporadic violence continued for the next three days in Aluthgama, with smaller incidents reported in the neighbouring town of Beruwela, leaving eight dead, according to residents, though police said only two fatalities had been reported. Locals also told IPS an additional 80 people were wounded in the brawls.

With homes and business premises going up in flames before their eyes, families were forced to take shelter in school buildings, where women huddled in overcrowded classrooms with their children while the men stood guard outside, fearful that the Buddhist mobs would return at any minute.

While the tragedy in Aluthgama is not the first example of post-war communal riots in the country, it has certainly been the worst, representing the first riot-related deaths since Sri Lanka declared an end to its ethnic conflict in 2009.

Previous incidents involving the BBS include the attack on a Muslim-owned clothing store on the outskirts of Colombo on May 13 last year and the storming of a press conference held by a group of Buddhist and Muslim leaders on Apr. 11 this year.

When the BBS rose to prominence in early 2013 its leaders said their aim was to help Buddhism regain its ‘rightful place’ in Sri Lanka.

Although officially constituted on May 7, 2012, the group did not release its 10-point declaration until February 2013, spelling out such demands as an end to Halal certification for certain food items, suspension of the scheme which allows Sinhalese women to work in the Middle East, and a full ban on birth control.

Speakers at BBS rallies have repeatedly claimed that so-called ‘Muslim extremism’ is the biggest threat facing Buddhists in a country where Muslims constitute 10 percent of the population of some 20 million.

Leaders of the movement claim they enjoy close ties with the government, but the state has denied official links with the group.

Rubble replaces communal harmony

As Muslim residents nervously make their way back to the scene of the furore, rights groups and concerned citizens are raising questions about the government’s lax reaction to the violence and the tensions that precipitated it.

From the G77 summit in Bolivia, President Mahinda Rajapaksa tweeted the following message immediately after being notified about the attacks:

The Government will not allow anyone to take the law into their own hands. I urge all parties concerned to act in restraint. -MR (1/2)

— Mahinda Rajapaksa (@PresRajapaksa) June 15, 2014

Back in Colombo on Jun. 18 he visited the troubled areas and promised an impartial probe into the incident.

But civil society leaders, as well as top officials in the Rajapakse government, want more assertive action from the government to stem communal violence once and for all.

According to Justice Minister Rauf Hakeem, “The law-and-order machinery completely failed.”

“For 72 hours, we begged the government to prevent this rally from taking place on Sunday for fear of riots […],” said the minister, who is also the head of Sri Lanka’s largest Muslim political party, the Muslim Congress, adding, “I am ashamed. I couldn’t protect my people.”

Under tremendous pressure, police arrested close to 50 people Monday night in connection with the violence, 30 of who have been remanded in police custody according to Police Spokesman and Superintendent Ajith Rohana.

Those who were caught in the violence told IPS that if the authorities had acted swiftly, the mayhem could have been avoided.

Eyewitnesses say that BBS members who entered Dharga Town encountered the police as they neared the mosque, but it didn’t slow them down.

“The police were either overwhelmed, or scared, but for whatever reason they did not take any action to prevent the clashes. If they had, lives would not have been lost,” Iqbal Asgar, a resident who fled the violence, asserted.

He said that most of the Muslim properties in the town had been torched, including at least one car dealership and one small factory. Residents told IPS that the losses could run into millions of rupees (thousands of dollars).

Even three days after the riots, tension was still palpable in the town, with plumes of smoke rising from the remnants of charred buildings. Anger among the victims, left helpless in the face of the carnage, hung thick in the air.

Muslim women were the first to venture back to the outskirts of Dharga to examine what was left of their properties. Those who lived closer to the town centre were too terrified to return – as were most of the men, who remained in the safety of the schools where the families initially sought shelter.

They have good reason to be afraid. Even after the army swept through the town in a bid to clear it of extremist elements, Asgar said the displaced heard rumors that the mobs were still at large, and had even attacked a vehicle carrying food aid for those affected.

In the absence of state sponsored relief immediately after the riots, religious and community groups, including Buddhist organisations, mobilised to gather and deliver dry rations, clothes and baby food to the affected population as early as Jun. 16.

Still, it will take sustained effort to repair the sacred bond of communal trust and harmony that now lies in ashes in the southwest of Sri Lanka.

“When you see your house burnt down, your life destroyed in flames, it is very difficult to regain the trust in those you expect to protect you,” Asgar told IPS.

According to Jehan Perera, who heads the advocacy body known as the National Peace Council, the government must publicly say that all minorities including Muslims are full citizens of the country, take legal action against the perpetrators of the riots and pay compensation for those who have lost loved ones and property.

“Failure to do so,” he told IPS, “would be an abdication of responsibility.”

President Rajapaksa has pledged to rebuild all damaged property with state support; it remains to be seen whether the promise will be honoured in the weeks and months to come.

(END)