SRI LANKA'S CRUCIAL VOTE: THE PRESIDENT VS. THE GENERAL
Amantha Perera
Time, January 26, 2010
Some people may celebrate Jan. 26, 2010, at Sri Lanka's first post–civil war presidential election — the island nation ended the 26-year-long conflict last May — but the advent of the poll has brought out deep tension, division and several alarming incidents of violence. "There is this foreboding sense that things could turn really bad," Keerthi Thenakoon, the chief executive of the election-monitoring body Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), told TIME. "It is like sitting on a dynamite pile that is giving off sparks."
The race between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his challenger, the former army commander Sarath Fonseka, is unexpectedly close. Rajapaksa won the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a brutal ethnic separatist group that once controlled much of northern and eastern Sri Lanka. But Fonseka, a hero in his own right in the same war, is a formidable opponent. He represents a patchwork coalition of opposition parties united in their antipathy to Rajapaksa, whom they say has disregarded the rights of the Tamil minority and indulged in blatant crony capitalism.
The opposition has even raised the specter of a military coup, warning that Rajapaksa will do anything to stay in power. At election rallies, some opposition speakers alluded to the People Power movement in the Philippines, born of outrage against the discredited 1986 election there. Rajapaksa's party dismissed those fears. "We don't need to use thuggery," says Susil Premajayantha, general secretary of the President's ruling United People's Freedom Alliance. "The people are behind us."
Amantha Perera
Time, January 26, 2010
Some people may celebrate Jan. 26, 2010, at Sri Lanka's first post–civil war presidential election — the island nation ended the 26-year-long conflict last May — but the advent of the poll has brought out deep tension, division and several alarming incidents of violence. "There is this foreboding sense that things could turn really bad," Keerthi Thenakoon, the chief executive of the election-monitoring body Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), told TIME. "It is like sitting on a dynamite pile that is giving off sparks."
The race between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his challenger, the former army commander Sarath Fonseka, is unexpectedly close. Rajapaksa won the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a brutal ethnic separatist group that once controlled much of northern and eastern Sri Lanka. But Fonseka, a hero in his own right in the same war, is a formidable opponent. He represents a patchwork coalition of opposition parties united in their antipathy to Rajapaksa, whom they say has disregarded the rights of the Tamil minority and indulged in blatant crony capitalism.
The opposition has even raised the specter of a military coup, warning that Rajapaksa will do anything to stay in power. At election rallies, some opposition speakers alluded to the People Power movement in the Philippines, born of outrage against the discredited 1986 election there. Rajapaksa's party dismissed those fears. "We don't need to use thuggery," says Susil Premajayantha, general secretary of the President's ruling United People's Freedom Alliance. "The people are behind us."
(...) [artículo aquí]
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