Sri Lanka’s main Tamil party won a landslide victory yesterday in landmark elections in the battle-scarred north, raising hopes of some degree of self-rule for the ethnic minority after decades of war.
The opposition Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won 30 out of 38 seats in polls for a provincial council in the former war zone.
The election was called by the government amid international pressure for the majority Sinhalese to share power with Tamils four years after the end of the bloody separatist conflict.
TNA leader C.V. Wigneswaran said the results were an overwhelming vote for self-rule for Tamils. He repeated his demand for the military to withdraw from the Tamil-dominated north, saying there was no reason for its presence since the end of the war in 2009.
Saturday’s vote in the former rebel stronghold has been promoted by the UN Human Rights Council as a step toward ethnic reconciliation.
The TNA swept all five districts in the election for the Northern Provincial Council, results from the Sri Lankan Department of Elections showed. The poll for the council, the first in 26 years, was held amid claims that the military tried to intimidate and harass voters and a Tamil candidate.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s United People’s Freedom Alliance, which governs nationally, won just seven seats in a humiliating defeat.
Rajapakse has accused the TNA of raising expectations of a separate state, a move opposed by the Sinhalese majority.
Rajapakse has won almost every major election since he led the campaign that crushed Tamil Tigers in 2009.
However, the spectacular military success has also triggered international calls to probe allegations his troops killed up to 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of fighting.
The Sri Lankan Department of Information on Saturday said the 68 percent turnout in the north was a good sign of “participatory democracy.”
The election comes ahead of a Commonwealth heads of government summit due to take place in Colombo in the middle of November, which Canada has boycotted over human rights concerns.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China is mischaracterizing UN Resolution 2758 for its own interests by conflating it with its “one China” principle, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert said on Monday. Speaking at a seminar held by the German Marshall Fund, Lambert called for support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the international community at a time when China is increasingly misusing Resolution 2758. The resolution had a clear impact when it changed who occupied the China seat at the UN, Lambert said. “Today, however, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] increasingly mischaracterizes and misuses Resolution 2758 to serve its own interests,” Lambert said. “Beijing