Tamil vote could sway Sri Lanka poll
Updated on 26 January 2010
In Sri Lanka's first general election since the end of its civil war, it is - ironically - the Tamil vote which could decide the outcome. Nick Paton Walsh reports.
Two former allies who led Sri Lanka to victory in the country's civil war are standing against each other in the country's first peacetime general election in nearly 30 years.
Channel 4 News Asian correspondent Nick Paton Walsh writes -
Today's presidential election was meant to usher in a landslide for the incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa. He had, after all, just ended a 26-year war against the Tamil Tiger insurgency when he called the vote two years early.
But then things went rather badly wrong in his inner circle: the army chief of staff, General Sarath Fonseka, fell out badly with the civilian he had only recently been taking battlefield orders from, the president himself. He announced his attention to stand against the Rajapaksas – Mahinda, and his brothers Gotobaya and Basil, a triumvirate accused by critics of having a stranglehold on the country's levers of power.
Suddenly the race became real; there were two of the war's victors to slug it out for the credit of ending the Tigers.
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Ironically, the Tamil vote became key - about 12 per cent of the electorate who now seem to be able to decide on the winner. Suddenly, they have become the power brokers. Their rights became key, and the camps they were held in began to open up, it was reported. But still, their choice was between two of their most vehement oppressors. Two men who were now trying to convince the country and the outside world that their opponent had dirtier hands.
But once again, violence is the main concern today in Sri Lanka. A series of reported blasts in Jaffna, a main Tamil town, will intensify concerns that scare tactics are being used to keep some types of voter at home. Then tomorrow's results may emerge tainted.
If there's no clear winner who gets over the 50 per cent barrier, then the practice of each voter having marked his second choice comes into play: the winner decided by who has the most second votes. Sri Lankans, by now, surely used to compromise.
