With the end of the war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Sri Lanka finds itself at a cross-roads: one path leads to peace and reconciliation between Sri Lanka’s ethnic communities; the other leads to dictatorship and authoritarianism. The government’s victory against the LTTE has put an end to the 25 years of terrorism that annihilated the island and brought hope for a peaceful future. But as the elections have shown, Singhalese and Tamils do not share a similar view of their future together. This is bad news for inter-ethnic peace and cohesion.

The presidential election results are hardly surprising. Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent president and national hero, won by a margin of 17%, following his successful campaign against the LTTE. However, the opposition candidate, General Sarath Fonseka, dominated in Tamil areas such as Jaffna and Vanni. Fonseka – although responsible, as the former Army Chief, for leading the national troops to victory in April 2009 – is perceived by many Sinhalese as a traitor. He accused the government of being responsible for the alleged war crimes committed by the troops on civilians during the last attack against the LTTE and he appeared willing to make concessions to the Tamils.

Fonseka’s motivation for such conciliation was probably political, and, in retrospect, a miscalculation. It was predicted beforehand that the Sinhalese vote would split between the two war heroes, Rajapakse and Fonseka, and that the minority Tamil vote would then decide which man would win at the ballot box. Accordingly, Fonseka planned to woo Tamil voters with concessions. The plan backfired: even though his promises to the Tamils were far from significant, the very idea of concessions to the Tamils turned many Singhalese voters away from Fonseka and towards Rajapakse.

In the wake of the elections, reconciliation will be all the more difficult. The victor is a man whose mandate is to offer no tangible concessions to his political and ethnic opponents. The clear geographical fracturing of the vote reflects the exact map of the war as the North and the East, the former LTTE strong-holds, voted for Fonseka and the South voted for the incumbent president. The majority of Sinhalese are thus not ready to accommodate the Tamils politically. Tamils are a wounded community, and although the recent annihilation of the LTTE leaves a vacuum for political representation, their strong will for political determination has prevented them from bowing to the State. The third ethnic group, the Muslims, is also greatly concerned by the recent election result. In such circumstances, and given the explosive nature of the inter-ethnic relations so far, Rajapaksa might be left with only two choices: concessions or repression.

He already gave his response to this quandary by ordering the arrest of General Sarath Fonseka, on charges of sedition, just a few days after the elections and by dissolving the parliament in order to consolidate his mandate. If he wins a large majority in the general elections, Rajapaksa will secure an iron grip on power and the current suppression of freedom of speech and of the opposition will become close to a dictatorship.

This is a harrowing prospect not just for the Tamils, but also for the Sinhalese. Not only are the perspectives for reconciliation very slim, and democracy a fading concept, but drawing on Rajapaksa’s first mandate, the economy of the island is also unlikely to improve.

Crippled by corruption, the lack of infrastructure and a brain drain created by the war, the Sri Lankan economy was close to bankruptcy last year. People are desperate to see the kind of prosperity they hoped for 40 years ago, when the island was deemed more economically vibrant than Singapore.

Nepotism and corruption have been common rule under Rajapaksa’s government and although Fonseka was a highly flawed candidate, his willingness to eradicate both would have been most welcome.

His recent arrest also means that the opposition is devoid of a charismatic leader. Despite his involvement in the war against the LTTE, Fonseka had managed to rally all sides under his banner, including the Tamil National Alliance, a (former) political mouthpiece for the LTTE.

It is thus not simply reconciliation and inter-ethnic cohesion between the Tamils and the Sinhalese that is jeopardized by the re-election of Rajapaksa, but Sri Lankan democracy itself. Without a strong opposition, press freedom, and with the unlimited powers given to the executive presidency model and a majority in the Parliament, Rajapaksa will have near-absolute rule. It seems highly unlikely he will direct his efforts towards a harmonious cohabitation with the Tamil minority. The Tamils must now face the prospect of defeat – once more – in politics, in everyday life, and in equal access to opportunities within Sri Lankan society.

Sri Lanka’s opposition talked of giving concessions to the country’s defeated Tamil minority. The Sinhalese majority said no. Melanie Gouby analyses Sri Lanka’s presidential election.
For all the talk of a close election, in the end President Mahinda Rajapaksa was re-elected comfortably when results were announced on Wednesday. General Sarath Fonseka, the former head of the Sri Lankan army and Rajapaksa’s main opponent, lost with 40.15 per cent of the vote amid questions over the fairness of the elections.
Indeed, Dayananda Dissanaoke, the Elections Commissioner, announced that he would resign following the election as he felt his directives had not been respected by the state media and the government.
“He is not satisfied with the state media and the authorities, who did not follow his instructions regarding how the state media should handle the coverage of the campaign. It is a disappointment,” said a consultant at the Department of Elections.

Although the opposition has claimed votes were rigged, so far no proof has been put forward. “I think the elections itself were transparent. It is the way the campaign was reported by the state media that is an issue,” said the consultant.

Rajapaksa had called the election early in order to bank on his victory against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the guerrilla movement that divided the island for over thirty years, but his plan seemed to be seriously jeopardised when victorious former army chief General Fonseka decided to run against him.

With the Sinhalese population apparently equally split between the two contenders, it seemed the Tamil minority would decide the victor. But a close look at elections results shows that Fonseka’s gamble to woo Tamil voters actually turned against him.
Indeed, while he won by a large margin in Tamil-heavy districts such as Vanni and Jaffna, and had a strong argument as the “national hero” and military mind behind the victory over the LTTE, Fonseka could not convince the Sinhalese majority that he would deliver as president.
“To me it seems obvious that he would not win. He said he would make concession to Tamils – although very small, that’s enough to put off many people here,” said Sudesh Jayarante, a 25-year-old Sinhalese engineer living near Colombo.
Fonseka’s hotel in Colombo, the luxurious Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel, was also surrounded by nearly a hundred soldiers on Wednesday for reasons that remain obscure.
Fonseka, as former leader of the national army, retains loyalty within the troops he led to victory last April, and it seems Colombo authorities may have feared he would rally soldiers and attempt to seize power on grounds of electoral fraud.

Numerous accusations that the other side might attempt a coup were made during the campaign, and international observers feared that clashes between partisans of the two candidates would occur following the election results. But the streets of Colombo remained relatively calmed yesterday.
The campaign was also marked by mutual accusations of responsibility for war crimes during the final decisive attack against the Tamil Tigers. Fonseka had taken a strong stance, claiming he would allow the military campaign to be scrutinised by an international commission.

But Rajapaksa never made concessions on either war crimes or the Tamils’ yearning for self-determination.
In spite of the effect created by Fonseka’s surprise candidacy, Rajapaksa’s campaign remained in line with his policy against the Tamil rebellion, and his refusal to make concessions secured him Sinhalese votes, and victory.
Rajapaksa also appealed to a section of the Tamil population. The Guardian quoted a Tamil truck driver from Jaffna on Sunday, saying: “When the war was going on, we suffered enormously at the hands of both pro-LTTE and pro-government groups. But all that ended with the elimination of the LTTE. Although many young people want a change we who have seen much in life strongly believe that credit goes to the president.”
Rajapaksa has thus been re-elected for a six-year term, and today Maithripala Sirisena, a minister in his government, announced the president would shortly dissolve parliament to ensure he holds a strong majority.
With an unchallenged second mandate, a country free from terrorism and a strong majority in Parliament, Rajapaksa will have free rein.
Given that his first term as president was characterised by corruption, nepotism and attacks on journalists that led Reporters Without Borders and Transparency International to include Sri Lanka in their respective lists of “troubled” countries, this is not something the Sri Lankan opposition and media will look forward to.

He may seem the most unlikely candidate of all, but former army chief General Sarath Fonseka has shaken off the Sri Lankan establishment and engaged in a fierce campaign to beat his former ally to the presidential throne.General Fonseka, the very man who led the army to victory, and once part of current president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s inner circle, dramatically turned against the power in place and declared he would run against his old friend in the election.

President Rajapaksa had called for early elections, hoping to strengthen his rule thanks to the nationalist sentiments prevailing in Sri Lanka following his government’s victory over the Tamil Tigers rebels last spring, ending a 26-year civil war.

Rajapaksa was expected to win the January 26th election hands down – but he didn’t reckon on Fonseka entering the fray.

As a military man who took tough decisions in the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerilla movement, Fonseka was not exactly the designated candidate for the opposition, and certainly not for the Tamil minority.

Nevertheless, last Wednesday the Tamil National Alliance, a party representing the Tamil population, declared it would “request from all Sri Lankans … to vote for General Sarath Fonseka”.

The campaign revolves around ethnic issues, but little is being said by either candidate about actual policies or how they will realise their lofty promises of good governance and economical revival.

Fonseka has committed himself to abolishing the executive presidency – which currently gives the president over-arching power – as well as fighting corruption and making concessions to the Tamil minority.

He promises to grant an amnesty to former militants and says that government troops will return occupied private lands to their Tamils owners.

But Fonseka is also an ardent Sinhalese nationalist and has yet to declare he will make concrete political concessions to the Tamils and recognise their right to self-determination. Some think his courtship of the Tamil population is simply a calculated electoral move.

“Personally I don’t believe him because he made literal statements as the leader of the army, saying that the minorities don’t have a place here,” said Sheila Richards, the head of a Colombo-based peace and reconciliation NGO. “The military is also behind the violation of media rights and the lack of freedom of expression.”

Fonseka promised he would pass a freedom of information law, and recently claimed that Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Minister of Defence and brother of Mahinda, should take responsibility for the killing of journalists in recent years.

At the heart of the feud between Fonseka and the Rajapaksa brothers lies a dispute over both who should take credit for the victory against the LTTE, and who is to blame for the high civilian death toll.

It was army chief General Fonseka who commanded the troops that finally defeated the LTTE after 26 years of bloody civil war, but President Rajapaksa credited the victory mainly to himself and his brother.

And when Fonseka was asked by US officials to testify in an investigation into possible war crimes in November, palpable tensions began to emerge within the power triumvirate.

Fonseka later declared that he would welcome such investigations once he was elected, and accused Gotabaya Rajapaksa of being responsible for the alleged crimes.

Since then, the election has been little more than a media circus, with each side hurling accusations at the other.

This blame game does not fool many Sri Lankans. To many, Fonseka is just the lesser of two evils, an anti-establishment candidate who will keep the establishment running.

“We are left with the choice of an extremely corrupt, centralised government which has disregarded the written constitution and runs the country like it’s a family business, or we’ve got an ex-General who was hired for the job purely due to his ruthless past and is just a mouthpiece for the opposing parties at the moment,” complains Sammath Gammampila, a 22-year-old Sinhalese student.

“What can you expect of someone like him, who led the war and denies his implication in the violation of human rights during the war? He was leading the army. But the presidency will be more ruthless if Rajapaksa is elected,” adds Sheila Richards.

Even if he is genuine about his fight against corruption, General Fonseka will be confronted by the realities of Sri Lanka’s establishment.

“The way things are now, it will be difficult to change it rapidly. Because Fonseka comes from a background that is close to this corrupted power, he was at the top of the army, it seems unlikely that those promises will be kept,” explains an opposition MP who wishes to remain anonymous.

On top of this, Sri Lankans wonder whether Fonseka will have what it takes to turn around the economy and bring them the comfort they are longing for.

“Full stomachs, a home and a job, that’s what most people want. They have forgotten long ago about their rights and about democracy. The war brainwashed them into thinking that this near state of dictatorship is normal,” adds the opposition MP.

But the rival candidates have barely touched on the economy during the campaign, and Fonseka’s manifesto does not make promises beyond easing the cost of living and providing employment for the country’s youth.

The reality is that economic issues may well be left in the hands of foreign powers, with India and China struggling to impose their respective spheres of influence over Sri Lanka.

New Delhi has a history of meddling in the island’s politics, and it was thanks to an Indian intelligence tip-off that Fonseka was ousted from his position in the army, according to Seema Sengupta, a freelance journalist based in Kolkata, India.

This is likely to push Fonseka closer to China, who largely funded last year’s decisive attack on the LTTE.

Whoever is elected will have to choose his allies carefully, but a stable Sri Lanka will also require foreign powers to act responsibly.

“India, as the largest South Asian neighbour, will be required to play a constructive role in ensuring that Sri Lanka can prosper”, says Sengupta. However, international pressure has had little effect in bending the will of the Sri Lankan elite either during or since the war last year.

Tamils voters, the “kingmakers” in the election according to observers, will have difficulty forgetting recent events and the ruthlessness with which they were repressed.

On the 26th, they will have to make a tough call on Fonseka – is the enemy of their enemy their friend? Last Updated on Thursday, 14 January 2010 03:36
Posted in Colombo Tagged: elections; war crimes; tamils, Fonseka ]]> http://melaniegouby.com/2010/01/14/sri-lankas-war-chiefs-fight-for-the-spoils-of-peace/feed/ 0 melaniegouby fonseka_rajapakse_vaharai_01 http://melaniegouby.com/2009/12/08/126/ http://melaniegouby.com/2009/12/08/126/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:07:07 +0000 melaniegouby http://melaniegouby.com/2009/12/08/126/ ]]>

Burdened by years of conflict, the people of Sri Lanka’s east coast thought massive international fundraising for the region following the 2004 tsunami would redevelop the economy and improve the quality of life. Instead, the benefits were frittered away through ignorance, incompetence and corruption. Melanie Gouby reports

Fish are rare in the waters off Arugam Bay on Sri Lanka’s southeastern coast, but dozens of motorboats line the beach like colourful beached whales. Donors’ names are painted on their sides proclaiming Western generosity. Their wrapped motors show they have never been used.

Four fishermen are sitting in front of a small cabin, repairing a net bitten by a dolphin the night before. None of them has a boat of their own, despite the row of abandoned hulls. They must collaborate and rent boats from companies based in Colombo.

“When they came to help us after the tsunami, NGOs gave the boats to the village leaders because they wanted them to supervise the distribution,” says Haj, 34. “But the leaders kept the boats to themselves. They tried to sell them to us. Normally it costs 300,000 rupees. They told the people to give them only 100,000 rupees. But it is still too much for us.”

In the wake of the tsunami that devastated Sri Lanka in 2004, international NGOs rushed in to offer the money of generous donors from all around the world. Village leaders, local authorities or local NGOs were used as intermediaries between international agencies and the population, but very little of that money actually went to the people. Corruption diverted it to a handful of pockets.

“Many NGOs came to help, but most of them did whatever they liked. They were not aware of the context, the culture, the politics. They did a lot of harm and misspent their money”, says K Arulvaratharajah, field coordination assistant at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Trincomalee.

Five years later, the coast is still strewn with houses in ruins and the lack of infrastructure is appalling. To travel the 300km from Colombo to Arugam Bay by car takes ten hours. Phone lines are rare and the internet is almost impossible to access. The local economy is plagued by this isolation and people have to survive by accumulating small jobs. They help in a hotel in the high season, cultivate their rice paddy in the low season and go fishing at night.

NGOs could have helped develop the economy for the long term. Instead they built cheap houses and gave poor quality boats to just about anybody, regardless of their real occupation.

“I remember meeting somebody here who had a restaurant. He did not even have a cooker. No one had looked into other kinds of needs. They assumed they were all fishermen because it was a coastal area”, says Louise Shah, head of monitoring and evaluation for the Community Livelihood Support Program, a UN project.

Naleen, a hotel owner in Arugam Bay, had to rebuild everything step by step, taking loans with private banks that he repaid with money made through a coconut timber export business. He does not understand why aid organisations did not set up loans for businesses like his own. “25 people live thanks to me now. What can a few boats do? All the hotels along the beach just reopened a year ago because we were not helped to start again.”

NGOs also employed local staff, whose ethnicity and personal interests could impede their objectivity. In some instances, only certain communities benefited from the aid. Instead of bringing everyone together as many had hoped, the disaster and ensuing aid relief exacerbated the ethnic strife. Tensions between the coastal people and those inland were fuelled by the unequal inflow of money and the impression that the other community always received more. Sinhalese farmers suffered from the diversion of the government’s money towards the guerrilla conflict in the north, Tamils suffered from being the target of an increased military presence in the region, Muslims suffered from the retrenchment of their community and ensuing lack of support.

The four fishermen on the beach are angry. To them, it has all been a waste. They saw NGO workers coming in nice 4×4s, staying in five stars hotels and leaving boats no one would ever use. With the tsunami, they lost everything – their houses, their livelihoods, for some of them their families too. They never saw the money sent by international donors, and once they were finally able to start fishing again, they discovered that the fish were not there anymore – a natural phenomenon after a tsunami.

People here are disillusioned and melancholic. Tomorrow may bring peace or war, for them it is “same old, same old”. Nothing seems to matter much anymore.

I was therefore dubious when one of my contacts invited me to join him and his friends for a night out in a club called Amuseum in the Galle Face Hotel (all the clubs are attached to hotels) and to this day, I still do not know what to make of that night.

Amuseum would not look awkward in London or Paris. Although very small it is decorated in a modern and rather funky fashion. All the usual spirits and cocktails can be bought at the bar, most of them imported from Europe or the US. The crowd dresses in the latest fashion, with girls wearing skirts so short it would make me feel embarrassed to wear one. The music was commercial but not bad and the atmosphere chilled out but wild enough to show everyone was having a lot of fun.

Once I put aside my feeling of discomfort due to the fact that I was the only blonde and pale skinned person in the room, I started talking with a few people around me. Most of the people knew each other from high school in Colombo and were now studying all over the world. They were rich kids on holiday, careless of what their country might be going through. To be fair some of them did have an opinion on the current events happening in Sri Lanka, but none really saw their country as the place they would later come back to. And who could blame them?

Sri Lanka offers very little for a young and bright person. The job prospects are slim and the industry not very diversified. Colombo “business centre” is merely composed of two towers, which were strangely given the name of ”world trade centre”, surrounded by half-finished low buildings that would not look fancy in the Bronx of New York. And although the partygoers admitted to me that it is nice to come back for the summer and party with all their friends, there is something claustrophobic about knowing everyone in each clubs you hang out.

Sri Lanka desperately needs its educated youth to stick around and help the re-building, and later on the development, of the country. In the past decades, the brain-drain that occurred because of the conflict deprived the country of some of its brightest mind, and although it is unlikely that the Diaspora will come back, Sri Lanka cannot afford to lose another generation to the sirens of the western world. The peace settlement depends on it, as only a stable and prosperous economy will give the Muslim, Sinhalese and Tamil communities the incentive to live together and keep jealousies and grief at bay. The government will have to work hard at it, but does it has the right arguments to keep those young and free minds on the island?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed to grant a $2.5 billion loan to Sri Lanka despite allegations of human rights abuses by government troops during the conflict against the guerilla group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

In February, Sri Lanka urgently requested an IMF credit facility of $1.9bn to stabilize its balance of payments rapidly approaching negative numbers because of a combination of declining exports and withdrawals of foreign investments in government bonds.

However Britain and the US, with the support of other nations, asked for the application and approval process to be delayed because of human rights abuses allegations linked to the Sri Lankan army offensive in the North.

The offensive was the last stage of hard fought war against the LTTE, otherwise known as the Tamil Tigers.

It lasted 6 months during which many civilians were displaced and used as human shields by the guerilla group as it retreated.

Despite the presence of civilians, the government ordered the shelling of Tigers held areas, thus possibly killing thousands of innocent people.

Following the end of the fighting, refugees were put into camps from which international aid organizations and media have been barred, with the exception of the United Nations.

This created unease over the IMF loan among a few western nations, including Britain who abstained to vote on Tuesday.

Nonetheless the IMF agreed to grant the loan.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the IMF said that “The end of the conflict provides Sri Lanka with a unique opportunity to undertake economic reform and reconstruction, which would be key to laying the basis for higher economic growth in the years ahead”.

The decision has brought criticism from human rights groups.

Human Rights Watch described it as a “reward for bad behavior” to the Sri Lankan government.

The organization had already alleged that the refugee camps of Vavuniya in the North are similar to “concentration camps” and that a “genocide” is taking place.

The IMF board, composed mainly of Western representatives, grants loans on the basis of economic and financial factors, reminded Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

Colombo, for its part, has promised to rehabilitate the refugees within six months and to negotiate rapidly a just settlement of the conflict with Tamil leaders.

Devastated by thirty years of conflict, the Tamil Tigers occupation and the recent blitz war led by government troops, the North and East regions of Sri Lanka are left with no basic infrastructures and a dying local economy.

In the first quarter of 2009, Sri Lanka’s economy grew at its slowest pace (1.5%) in six years as the global recession curbed the demand for the island’s exports, and the war engulfed a large part of the GDP.

But the end of the war may bring the necessary calm to invigorate growth. “With the war ending, an improvement in confidence will draw investment and tourism”, Shivanta Meepage, senior analyst at Acuity Stockbroker Pvt. in Colombo told Bloomberg, “The northern regions will come into play in some time”.

The government hopes to increase tourism by 20% each year and is launching a worldwide campaign to advertise the island holiday potential.

Dhammika Perera, chairman of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka, said in a press release that “Foreign direct investments could quadruple to as much as $4 billion in three years”.

The IMF’s conditions to the loan include the reconstruction of the conflict affected areas of the country, as well as the reduction of military expenditures.

A press release published by the Sri Lankan government says that the loan will be used to help vulnerable segments of society, but “it remains to be seen”, says Susrutha Goonasekera, Social Protection specialist at the World Bank in Colombo. “The government has not looked at social protection options so far but it might be because of the lack of fiscal opportunity. We can hope the loan will change this”.

The debt contracted by Sri Lanka will amount to 81% of its GDP, less than in 2002 when it was 106%. The Central Bank estimates that by the end of 2013, it should amount for 65% of the GDP and should be completely paid off within forty years.