Nationalist political parties in Sri Lanka said on Tuesday that an upcoming presidential election had become a referendum on the peace process as talks remained on hold with Tamil Tiger rebels.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse earlier in the week signed agreements with two nationalist parties for their support in the election in return for a raft of commitments which included the redrafting of a ceasefire with the Tigers.
The deals by Rajapakse, who is the ruling Freedom Party nominee for presidential elections due by the end of the year, threaten to upset a Norwegian-backed peace bid aimed at ending three decades of ethnic bloodshed.
A spokesman for one of the parties, the all-monk National Heritage, said the agreements were squarely aimed at getting voters to focus on what all three parties view as the failure of the peace process.
"The election is a referendum on the unitary state, it is a referendum on the role of Norway, it is a referendum against terrorism," spokesman Udaya Gammanpila said.
Rajapakse's agreements with the National Heritage and the main Marxist parties include the renegotiation of a truce with the Tamil Tigers and the abandoning of tsunami aid and federal power-sharing deals with the rebels.
The power-sharing deals were reached under Norway's mediation, but the parties say they were "biased towards Tigers."
"I will protect the unitary character of the country," Rajapakse said on Tuesday at one of Buddhism's holiest shrines, the Temple of the Tooth, in the hill town of Kandy.
Analysts said the agreements by the nationalist parties have sharpened the election focus in the majority-Buddhist and majority-Sinhalese nation of 19.5 million people.
"The prime minister has turned the election into a referendum on the peace process," said Sunanda Deshapriya, a director at the private Center for Policy Alternatives think tank. "The PM's deal with the Marxists actually helps the Tigers to show the rest of the world that Sinhalese politicians are not willing to concede anything."
Retired airforce chief Harry Gunatillake agreed.
"The prime minister is playing straight into the hands of the Tigers by showing that a vote for him is a vote against the peace process," he said.
Anti-Tiger and anti-Norway slogans were already lining streets in Colombo and other major towns ahead of the elections, not expected before the end of October at the earliest.
"The Tigers might actually like the prime minister because he projects the hard line [of the majority]. And that helps them in their international campaign against the government," retired diplomat Nanda Godage said.
Gunatillake, who was also an adviser to outgoing President Chandrika Kumaratunga, said the fate of a US$3.2 billion aid package for tsunami reconstruction could be in the balance if Rajapakse is elected and delivers on his promises.
The agreements would also be a reversal of a peace process begun in 2000 by Kumaratunga, the present leader of Rajapakse's party.
Kumaratunga called for an explanation in a letter on Friday that accused Rajapakse of violating party discipline and undoing her efforts to bring about peace.
Rajapakse's main challenger, former premier Ranil Wickremesinghe of the right-wing United National Party, says he wants to revive the peace bid and retain Norway's services despite a change of government in Oslo.
The Norwegian embassy in Colombo has said there would be no change of policy in their peace-brokering efforts despite the opposition winning Monday's elections to the Norwegian parliament.
Tamil legislator Nadarajah Raviraj said he feared that the Sri Lankan premier's pre-poll deals were a backward step.
"Even if he does not win, he has pushed his own party to a position from which we have emerged more than a decade ago," Raviraj said. "From a solution based on a federal state, he is taking the party back to a unitary state."
Tiger rebels and the government in February 2002 agreed to a ceasefire and in December that year accepted to share power under a federal state, but peace talks have been on hold since April 2003.
The minority Tamils have warned that any move that effectively scuttles the peace bid could see the country return to a bitter conflict that has claimed over 60,000 lives since 1972.
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